Nothing of Us Remains
by Elven Ink
Summary: When Rhys and Fiona opened the treasure within the Vault of the Traveler, they were whisked away. But to where and why? Rhys finds himself tumbling through the wreckage of a past he was not part of, and yet, one he has become so intricately entangled with… Eventual Rhys/Handsome Jack.
1. Chapter 1

Rhys could hear his heart pounding in his ears, his chest thumping as he reached out to lift the lid of the treasure chest before them. He still hadn't quite absorbed the sheer insanity that he was _in a freaking Vault_, let alone claiming its power and prize. What would be locked away inside this ancient chest? A weapon? A relic? An answer? As the lid fell away, nothing but the purest of light surged out. It was all Rhys could do to flinch away, shielding his eyes as he winced and then—

—then he was falling. The ground disappeared and Rhys dropped like a stone, leaving his stomach behind as his scream trailed like the tail of a comet behind his ungainly fall. Looking around desperately, he couldn't see or hear Fiona. He couldn't see anything but bright, brilliant lights of white and purple hues. Flailing and falling, the only comfort that this would not be his eternity came from a voice all around him.

"_Where does the traveler go? To where he wants? To where there is power? Or to where he is needed the most?_"

"Wh-wha? Bad—time—for riddles!" Rhys gasped out, trying to speak while the air around him rushed and roared. "Errr! Can you—stop me—falling first?"

"_You entered the Vault of the Traveler. You are traveling. To where?_"

"Ahhhh! Dammit! Err! I-I guess where I'm needed is good?"

"_...Correct_."

"Wait, there was a _wrong_ answer?! I thought this was rhetorical?! What if I got it wrong?!" The man yelled, but his questions went unanswered. The light around him increased, forcing him to shut his eyes again. The heat seared and rushed towards him, but before he could worry that this might very well be the end, everything stopped.

It was quiet.

Cold.

And still.

Rhys opened one eye, not daring to move in case he fell off whatever blessed solidarity had materialised under his back to keep him from that horrible sensation of plummeting to his death. Once he was assured that he wouldn't fall anymore, Rhys pushed himself up to a seated position, looking around.

"Where the hell…?" He muttered, taking in his cold and unusual surroundings. It looked like the inside of a cave, but the rocks underfoot were dark and uneven — long-cooled lava, which no doubt had once lit this place up in a bright and warm. Rhys got to his feet and began to walk without much aim at all. "This? This is where I'm needed? Well, that's a real kick in the old self-esteem. The disembodied voice has decided the best place for me is...a cave. On my own. Away from literally everyone. Nice."

As his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, (or, more accurately, his ECHO-eye kicked in and cast everywhere ahead of him in a golden glow), Rhys could make out the scars of a battle along the stones around him. Great claw marks cutting through the walls, scorches and searing burns half-melted the stalagmites either side of him. And there, not far from him...a fallen solider.

Wasn't it?

Rhys approached carefully, eyes narrowing. Then he froze as he all but swallowed his heart, stomach, and possibly his soul too. What he saw burrowed down to his very core, locking his limbs in place in a mixture of fear and a strange sense of grief. There, lying sprawled against the rocks...was a man he'd never truly met, and yet, who Rhys was all too familiar with.

"...J-Jack?" Rhys spoke in a hushed tone, stepping forward. The man's mask was missing, his eyes were closed, blood dried and caked over his scarred face and tattered clothing. Most unnervingly was the bullet hole boring into his forehead. _Why the hell am I here? The Vault where Handsome Jack died? What am I supposed to do here? _Movement caught Rhys' eyes then; a slow, gentle movement, hardly noticeable were it not for the stillness of everything else around him demanding any such shift be recognised.

Jack was...breathing. He was _breathing_?!

Half of Rhys's mind screamed for him to run in the opposite direction, while the other half demanded answers. If nothing else, he was trapped here. And only one of them had gotten here by a conventional-ish method.

Rhys crouched down by the fallen CEO. He half-felt like he should respectfully look away, despite everything Rhys had experienced with the artificial back-up of Jack. How much of the AI had been accurate, he wondered. How much had Nakayama crafted of the program on his own, for his own devices? No doubt the AI had been similar to the real deal, but a carbon copy, like-for-like? Rhys couldn't know for certain, and perhaps this uncertainty was what allowed the man to cling to a little shred of respect for Jack now.

But it was so unusual to see him unmasked that Rhys couldn't help but look at Jack and the strange scar that fractured his face. He had never seen a wound like it, striking the flesh with unnatural blue tissue. As the man peered closer, his nose inches from Jack's, Rhys could see the same odd blue scarring had knitted over the bullet wound between Jack's eyes.

"He won't wake up."

"GAH!"

Rhys recoiled so sharply at the sound of another voice that he fell backwards, landing in a tangle of limbs on the floor. Wide-eyed and frightened, he gawked at the fallen form of Jack, his own chest heaving. He looked left, right, up, and then scrambled on all fours to look behind him. Nothing but cold, cooled magma greeted him.

"I am _done _with the disembodied voice thing!" Rhys complained, getting to his feet and continuing to look around. "Seriously, can you just...not do that? It reminds me of a guy I used to know and—"

As he turned around, Rhys nearly walked straight into a woman. She had appeared between him and Jack, and Rhys yelped once again. "For the love of—yeah and _that_! That, he did that too! Stop!"

The woman stood shorter than he was, and if Rhys had to guess, she was maybe five or so years younger than him. She was as thin as a whip, and struck with just as much ferocity with a pair of glistening blue eyes framed by locks of dark hair. For all the world her gaze reminded Rhys of someone, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"I didn't mean to startle you," the woman admitted, recoiling back a little herself. "I'm sorry. Appearing like this is...difficult here." As she spoke, Rhys could see her form flutter and distort in beats.

"You're...not really here." He said, disappointment clear in his voice as Rhys realised he was still very much alone save for a comatose Jack. The woman looked down, a palpable weight on her shoulders that looked to crush her slight form.

"No more than I ever was."

She stood to the side a little, and Rhys could see a beam of light projecting out of the device clasped on Jack's coat lapel. Rhys recognised it as a cloaking device, top of the range, but certainly not capable of _this_.

"How are you _doing _that?"

"I'm—I _was_—a Siren. Most of my life was spent flying through the codes and cables of the digital world around us. I left echoes of myself behind on the ECHOnet. Fitting, don't you think?"

Rhys' heart dropped a little as he realised what she was saying.

"Then you're—?"

"Dead. Technically," the Siren said matter-of-factly. "I know this must seem like a lot to take in, talking to a hologram of a dead person and all..."

"You'd be surprised."

At this, the woman almost smiled. But the expression faltered, and her face set once more in a sterner tone.

"Still, I have to ask — why are you here? How did you get here? This Vault is dead. It's been sealed and removed from the outside world for some time now. You shouldn't have been able to get in here."

Rhys felt his hand rubbing the back of his head before he even noticed he'd started the nervous habit.

"I have no idea. One minute, I was in the Vault of the Traveler, the next, I'm here. I was kinda hoping you'd tell me how to get out of here. And also how a guy with a bullet in his head is still breathing."

He nodded over at Jack again, still not quite believing it himself. The woman seemed uncomfortable to field either question, with one arm looping around the front of her torso to hold the other at the elbow.

"I—I'm afraid I don't know how to leave this place. But there are few on Pandora who studied the Vaults more than my father. It was his obsession. As much as I'd rather leave him here, he's the best chance I had to escape. But I haven't been able to wake him."

Rhys could feel his brain short-circuiting, and he was pretty certain his left eye twitched.

"Your f-father? _Jack? _You? You're...you're _Angel?_"

The Siren nodded, though her brow furrowed.

"How do you know my name? Jack didn't speak about me to many people...and you're from Atlas." She nodded down at Rhys' jacket. Rhys chewed the inner corner of his lip, an awkward habit he had developed as both a means to try and stop himself talking and to ground himself enough to talk sensibly.

"Err...it's a really long story. But your father and I sorta...kinda...knew each other? Anyway, I saw a photo of you in his office and he opened up a little."

This seemed to surprise Angel, her eyes widening and mouth parting a little.

"A photo? Wow...that...must have been from a long time ago..."

For a moment, she turned back to look at Jack, and Rhys didn't dare to speak. There was so much sorrow and anger between this father and daughter that he couldn't begin to unpack from just a look.

"Listen...you said he might know how to get us all out of this Vault, right? Maybe I can help you wake him up?" Rhys offered, moving back over to Jack and squatting back down to look at him again. "Y'know, I was on Pandora for a while, and I saw a lot of bullets go through a lot of heads. And not one skull stayed in tact."

Angel grimaced, and Rhys immediately regretted the rather detailed observation he'd given. Recalling those moments of violence around him made his stomach turn. Pandora really was a blood-filled pit sometimes. But the point still stood that for whatever reason, Hyperion's CEO had caught a bullet between the eyes and had not only sustained no other injury from it other than the initial bullet wound, but was also still breathing.

_If the guys at Hyperion found out about this, they might actually start calling Jack a god for real_, Rhys thought, shivering at the thought.

"My guess? It has something to do with my father's time on Elpis. This...this wasn't his first Vault. The first one he went to it—it _changed _him. I'm starting to think it changed him more than even I realised," Angel explained, floating over to Rhys and crouching next to him. "I don't think anyone enters a Vault and leaves without it changing them on a deeper level."

Rhys gulped, trying to move the lump of sheer anxiety that had built in his throat at Angel's words: he'd waltzed right into the Vault of the Traveler. Was he going to be all...messed up now too? Although, being bullet-proof didn't seem too bad.

"So...Jack's alive 'cause of something the Vaults did to him?"

"I think Jack's alive because the Vaults _want _him alive. But we need him to be awake. And if you're here...I think the Vaults want him to be awake too."


	2. Chapter 2

The question of how to wake up a man who really ought to be dead fretted in Rhys' mind. His lower lip jutted a little as he brooded over the matter at hand, eyes narrowing at Jack. The older man hadn't moved a muscle, save for the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.

"So, what did _you _try?" Rhys asked, turning a little to look over at the hologram of Angel. She smiled sheepishly and shrugged. She had taken to floating behind Rhys, her hands clasped behind her back as she peered over his shoulder.

"Well, there isn't much I can do from here. I did try electrocuting him!" She said, sounding quite happy about that fact. "I surged the cloaking device a bit, but to be honest, it wasn't a very strong shock. But I didn't want to risk depleting the battery on it. I...I don't know what would happen to me if it ran out of charge. It's not connected to a network here so...I'm trapped in it."

Rhys mentally chalked that up as another item on his ever-growing list of quests: help the Digi-Angel escape her current device and back into the relative freedom of the ECHOnet as a whole. It could only be better than that tiny machine clipped to Jack's coat, right?

"Okay, so, no zapping him then. We're gonna get you out of here, Angel. Just gotta...figure out how to wake the sort-of-dead," Rhys trailed off, looking back at Jack. He lightly tapped the toe of his boot against the sole of Jack's shoes, hardly making contact. Strictly speaking, Rhys was terrified to wake the other man up.

"Oh! That's a good idea!" Angel exclaimed, having clearly been watching Rhys' idle motion. "We should hit him!"

"Wh-what?"

"That's how they wake people up sometimes on ECHOnet shows. Trust me, I've watched_ many _of them," the woman half-complained, rolling her eyes a little. "Give him a slap in the face. I can't do it myself, so you can have the honour."

A long silence stretched between the two as Rhys digested exactly what was being asked of him. His brain spectacularly vomited out what was being asked of him in utter refusal.

_Slap...Handsome Jack. She wants me to smack Handsome Jack, a total psychopath, straight across the face, _he thought to himself.

On the one hand, no one deserved a slap more than Jack. On the same hand, few people deserved the chance to slap Jack more than Rhys himself. But, on the other hand, a successful slap would be one that woke Jack up. Rhys would have to deal with a confused, enraged, and likely homicidal Jack, post-slapping.

But if he didn't, Rhys was going to die slowly in a cold, dark Vault. Honestly, Rhys wasn't sure which scenario was worse. He looked over at Angel — any unsuccessful scenario left her as a digital ghost trapped in Jack's cloaking device though. He couldn't do that to her.

Rhys inhaled through his nostrils. He rolled his shoulders, flexed his fingers, and crouched by Jack again.

"Alright. Sure. Yeah. I can do this," Rhys said, lifting his hand. "I got this. Noooo problem. Just gonna...give him a little slap and he might wake up."

_And kill me_.

Rhys shook his head as images of the many ways Jack might kill him flooded into his mind — he knew damn well the man would try to throttle him. He didn't need to beat himself up with hypothetical other methods too.

The man raised his hand back — and then swiftly dropped it to hang limp at his side.

"Dammit! Argh! Okay, no, okay...I got this."

Rhys raised his hand again.

Jack continued to sleep peacefully.

Rhys could _feel _his jaw tensing to a quiver, and he let his arm drop harmlessly again. He quickly got to his feet and walked away a few paces, hands raking through his hair.

"I can't! I can't do it, Angel! He'll tear my throat out!"

Angel did offer him a sympathetic look, at least, but Rhys could see a multitude of questions behind her eyes.

"You seem to know him well. I won't lie, it's a possibility. Look, if he does try, I'll do everything I can to help you. I promise."

Rhys stopped pacing and looked back over his shoulder at where Angel lingered. Guilt tore at his features as he realised what the woman was risking to try and give him the courage to do this simple, stupid act.

"You can't risk overloading the cloaking device again though. What if it runs out of power?"

"I'll just give him a _little _zap. Enough for you to get away until he exhausts himself."

The man grimaced, eyes flicking back to Jack as though the man might jump up on his own.

"...I really hate how you said _exhausts himself _and not _calms down_."

"He...doesn't do that very well."

And didn't Rhys know it. It seemed the AI version of the man had replicated Jack's own explosive display of emotions, both good and bad, to a high degree of accuracy. Rhys had seen both in the hologram of Jack, from giddy bursts of excitement whenever he had agreed to trust the other man, to sudden, crushing fury at the slightest hint of them not being on the same wavelength. In the space of a day, the AI may have called Rhys his best friend and his worst enemy several times.

None of this was helping psyche Rhys up for potentially pissing the guy off.

"At least tell me he's a morning person?" Rhys half-joked, a nervous laugh tumbling from his lips as he went back to Jack's prone form.

"You know he used to be a coder before he was a CEO, right?" Angel asked, titling her head to the side.

"Oh _god_..."

Rhys inhaled deeply again, trying to settle his nerves. One slap. One good slap and then he would run. He could totally outrun Jack, right? His legs were way longer — he had distance advantage. And Jack had to be, what, at least ten years older than Rhys himself? Sure he could outrun him.

By now, Rhys was pretty certain his heart had taken up residence in his throat. He could feel the pulse pounding in his neck, cold sweat dripping down his neck.

_Just do it. Just...smack him. Wake him up. Just like he said, right? Fast and painful, like a band aid. _

He was staring at Jack's prone form, his arm held poised over his head once more, his robotic arm resting on the ground for stability as he crouched over the other man.

_Just do it. Slap him. Slap him! _

Suddenly, the tiniest of movements caught Rhys' paranoid eyes. Jack's brow twitched in what _might_ have been a frown.

Rhys screamed, fell back a little, and swung his robotic arm up on impulse.

**_W__H__ACK!_**

His metal hand connected perfectly with Jack's chiselled jaw, the palm slamming against his cheek in a moment of pristine connection. Never before in Rhys' life had he struck with such accuracy, such precision, such power. Sadly, he had not intended to smack Jack in the face with his cybernetic arm. And for good reason — the strength of the blow sent Jack crashing off to the side in a tangle of limbs.

"Oh _shit!_" Rhys gasped out, staring with wide and terrified eyes at Jack's crumpled form. Angel floated around the man, though Rhys wasn't sure if she was nervous for her father's current state or worried that he had just crushed the skull of their only hope of getting out of the Vault.

"I wanted you to smack him, not end our family bloodline!"

"I-I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Rhys managed to get to his feet and darted over to the injured man on the floor. "Is he okay? Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap! I didn't mean to use that hand, I just, I thought I saw him move and —"

Rhys was cut off by a _snarl _of rage. Everything moved in the blink of an eye; Angel disappeared with a snap, and Jack _lunged _at Rhys like a coiled viper from the ground. His eyes were ablaze with equal measures of anger and confusion as his hands found Rhys' throat.

"Ja—_**gak**_!"

Jack barrelled Rhys over flat onto his back, knocking what little air he had left out of his lungs. Rhys struggled and twisted, legs kicking and thrashing as he tried to peel the man's vice-like grip from his neck. He couldn't call for Angel, but every ounce of his mind prayed the woman would do as she promised and send a jolt of sparks through Jack's chest sooner rather than later.

Looming over him, Jack's scarred and bloodied face was now decorated with a blossoming bruise over his left cheek and jaw, his expression twisted with rage.

"Y'think you _won_, Vault Hunter?" Jack spat savagely, with no hint that he had registered Rhys at all. "You wanna kick_ me_ when I'm down?! I'll tear your fricking throat out and kick _that _when it's splattered all over the gr—urgh..._o__oo__h_..."

Jack's grip abruptly loosened as his face slackened, all anger draining away and taking his energy with it. His mismatched eyes crossed slightly, unfocused, and the man swayed a little on the spot where he had Rhys pinned. Then, he slumped forward, landing in a heap to the side, partly on top of Rhys. The terrified man managed to wriggle out from under Jack, putting distance between them with a mad scurrying kick of his legs as he simultaneously dragged air back into his lungs.

Angel's form flickered back into existence, peering over her father.

"He's passed out. I guess it makes sense. The Vault's energy has kept him alive, but he's been in here over a year without food and water. He might be alive, but his body is exhausted. Dammit...even if we wake him up, he'll just pass back out."

It was kind of difficult to feel sorry for a guy who had nearly strangled him to death a few moments prior. Rhys, rubbing his throat tenderly, got to his feet and looked around.

"Don't think we'll have much luck finding food here," he said, rubbing the back of his trousers to get the dust off. Absently, Rhys' hand went into his back pocket. He'd fallen pretty hard when Jack tackled him to the ground, and he was worried that a certain item had shattered in his pocket. Rhys pulled the delicate little device out from his back pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand. His old ECHOeye, cut out from his pupil and painfully snapped from his own optical nerves, remained thankfully intact. Rhys had made a habit of keeping the little device on his person at all times. Though the entity lurking within terrified him, he had always felt uneasy at letting it out of his sight.

He thought about the program trapped within its void.

"Angel...does your father have any cybernetic implants?" Rhys asked, already hating his own train of thought. Angel looked up, frowning.

"Ah — yes, he does. He's blind in his left eye, so he had a bespoke cybernetic lens grafted into the pupil. It connects to a lens on his mask and plugs it directly to his optic nerves — with his mask on, he has perfect vision."

Rhys didn't look up from the old ECHOeye in his palm. This was a terrible idea. Every fibre of his being said this was a terrible idea. But Jack needed to be awake to get them out of the Vault...but they needed to be out of the Vault to get Jack food and water enough for him to _be _awake.

"—I know someone who could wake him up. Can I plug a different lens into his eye implant?"

"It should be possible. What are you planning?"

Angel began to float over to Rhys, peering at his hand in curiosity. "Is that an ECHOeye?"

"Yeah it's my old one. There's a...program on there that could help. You're sure Jack doesn't have any other cybernetics in his limbs or anything?"

"Not that I know of."

"And his cloaking device is offline. There's no way it's connected to any other device here?"

"Definitely offline. All the doors are closed, nothing can get in or out...including me."

"Alright...alright..." Rhys mumbled, trying to calm himself down. He sat himself down next to Jack's head and, with one shaking hand, slowly peeled back the eyelid of his damaged eye. Now that he knew what to look for, Rhys could see a glimmer of a lens over the otherwise milky green eye. "Oh man, this...this is the worst idea I've ever had. And I just slapped Handsome Jack," he stammered, before slowly lowering the wires of the ECHOeye into Jack's eye and plugging it into the cybernetic lens housed there.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the lens blinked into life, a bright cyan blue light bursting from the lens. The light twisted and fractured, then finally settled on a projected image floating above Jack's fallen form and looming over Rhys — just like the real deal, an incredibly pissed-off looking Jack scowled at the man.

"Oh, _oooooof _course! You finally _grow a pair_, but you can't even plug me back into _your _cybernetics to face me like a man, cupcake?" AI Jack snarled, hovering closer to Rhys so their faces would have nearly touched if the other being were corporeal. "You jack me in to some KO'd lowlife with a _boring-ass_ normal skeleton? What, you think I can't tear your dumb throat out from here—" the AI halted in his rant as he glanced downwards, realising who he was plugged into. He looked back at Rhys, almost looking hurt. Rhys smirked, folding his arms.

"Yeah. Some KO'd lowlife. Guess we finally agree on something. Jack, meet _Jack_."


	3. Chapter 3

Rhys couldn't recall ever seeing the AI at a loss for words. But the blue hologram's face was rigid with confusion as he looked down at Jack, and if Rhys wasn't mistaken, there was more than a little fear in his eyes. It was at moments like these that he often found himself forgetting that this version of Jack was a computer program. Everything about this Jack was so deceptively alive that Rhys was quite sure the AI had convinced himself that he was the true Jack.

The alternative was an existential crisis. One that he'd probably just sparked in the program right now.

Despite everything, Rhys felt a pang of guilt at the discomfort he'd caused the digital Jack. They had literally torn chunks out of each other by the end, the fallout of their eventual clash bringing down Helios itself. Yet there had been a time where the pair had been more than amiable. He couldn't forget that even if he wanted to. He sometimes considered it a character flaw in himself — even after a betrayal, Rhys was prone to remembering the good as well as the bad.

"Look, I know this is probably _really _weird for you, but—"

"That's...me. But I'm right here?" AI Jack cut Rhys off, though he didn't lift his gaze from the broken form beneath him. Slowly, Rhys got to his feet so that he was somewhat level with the floating projection, though he had no idea what he could do. He could hardly reach out to the being (if that were possible he was certain this Jack would have made as much of an effort to crush his windpipe as his predecessor).

"Yeah, that's the, err..." Rhys stopped himself. Again, for all the damage the AI had done to him, Rhys couldn't find enough pettiness within him to sting the AI by calling the other Jack _'real_' by comparison. "That's the original Handsome Jack. He's alive, but we need him awake."

"We?" The hologram finally looked up at Rhys then, eyes ablaze with scorn. "Ha_haaa_, no. No, _we _don't need him awake. You do. I am the last person on this crappy planet that needs this guy to wake up, and I am _definitely _the last guy on the planet that you get to ask a fricking favour from!"

There it was. The unrelenting belief of a world against him. The utter blindness that he had done any wrong unto others, or indeed, to himself. But Rhys couldn't risk rising to meet AI Jack's fury. A thousand spitting retorts remained on the tip of his tongue as the man tried to keep his voice level.

"If you don't wake him up, you're stuck here with me," Rhys said. "You're plugged into his ocular cybernetic. And it isn't connected to anything else. No network, no other cybernetics...it's a bigger void, Jack, but it's still a void. You wanna stay there, or do you wanna get out?"

AI Jack's eyes narrowed, and Rhys almost laughed at the pout that jutted out in defiance. He leaned forward a little, scowling down at the other man.

"Sure. Yeah. I'll help you get out of here, dickhole. Here's what you do," the artificial intelligence snarled. "You go find the biggest, most jaggedy-ass looking rock you can find here in your future tomb. Then you bend _riiiiight _over, and go fuck yourself with that big ol' jaggedy rock until you die. Capiche?"

The hologram then turned on his heel, folding his arms over his chest and turning his chin up and away from Rhys. After a brief second, AI Jack flickered, then disappeared from sight.

The dramatic exit would have had more impact if Rhys didn't know the digital entity as well as he did. Sure, he hadn't met the real Jack before, but the AI? Those two had shared a mind for too long. And he knew precisely how long Jack's attention span and capacity for boredom would last.

Arching an eyebrow, Rhys remained standing where he was, folding his own arms over his chest and tapping his foot slightly.

"Three...two...one..." he half-smirked as the air crackled to life in front of him again, and the blue glow of AI Jack returned almost on cue.

"Okay, my point still stands that you can, and should, go fuck yourself with a spiky piece of rock, you prick," AI Jack greeted him with all the grace of a rabid skag. "But this fleshbag's eyeball isn't much more interesting than your back pocket was."

The artificial intelligence appeared to dislike Jack even more than he hated Rhys. Then again, Rhys supposed if he was faced with another version of himself and was told that the other was more 'real' than he was, he'd be pretty frustrated too. Besides, while AI Jack's anger was often potent and unrelenting, it was usually directed at one particular person or group at a time. Sure, he'd change that focus at the drop of a hat, but if he wanted to direct most of his temper at, well, technically himself...Rhys wasn't going to argue.

"Then you're gonna like the next part," Rhys weakly smiled at the AI. "Could you zap his eye a little? Enough to wake him up and keep him awake."

For a second, it looked as though AI Jack would refuse for the sake of refusing a request from Rhys. But the moment passed and the hologram dimmed a little, then disappeared as a snapping surge crackled around the real Jack's eyes.

The effect was both immediate and as uncannily inelegant as the AI's tone had been moments before. Jack lurched, arms and legs flailing for a moment before both hands clapped over his left eye.

"SON OF A FUCKING TAINT!"

The crackling subsided to a dull hum, and following a stream of half-muttered expletives, a wincing Handsome Jack looked up at Rhys from where he was still sitting on the floor. "You again? Alright. Cool. Yeah. Well done. Slow clap. Promote this guy. You have my attention, kiddo, and I am a _little _pissed off. Start talkin', and keep praying that I like what I hear."

* * *

How do you tell a man like Handsome Jack that he was defeated?

Rhys not only had to ponder this impossible task, but also verbally complete it under the pressure of the ticking time-bomb that was Jack's short temper. He rapidly told the man everything he knew of his last venture to the Vault: how he'd successfully opened it, summoned the Warrior, fought the Vault Hunters…

"— and they, well...well, it _was_ four against one. Or two, if you count the Warrior," Rhys hedged, feeling his throat growing drier. It was strange — whatever ease and recognition he felt with AI Jack had not translated to the real one at all. It was as though he were meeting the AI's twin, and Rhys was very conscious that although they looked alike, they were two different people. He wasn't even sure how accurately AI Jack reflected the real deal, and whether or not he could rely on what he knew of the AI in order to approach Jack himself. "They er...they...beat you. And they killed the Warrior and then...well, they came out of the Vault saying you were dead, but —"

"But surprise surprise, bandits are all liars," Jack spat. "Me? Dead? At the hand of a couple of dumbass bandits? That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And seriously, they said they _killed _the Warrior? A freaking _Vault Guardian_? Yeah no, that's...that's ridiculous! Vault Guardians don't die that easily, and when they do, the thing they _guarded_ is free for the taking. But those Vault Hunters came out empty handed, huh? Yeah, 'cause the Warrior was still alive when they left. Idiots..." Jack had started to laugh bitterly at this, even as he was growing pale and swaying again. As if on cue, a bolt of blue snapped around his left eye and forced him awake again. "Ow! Fuck! Stupid lens is playing up or somethin'...but yeah, those Vaulties didn't kill me, and they sure as hell didn't kill the Warrior. _God_, everyone on Pandora is so freaking gullible!"

Rhys looked away, debating whether or not to point out to Jack the large new scar he was sporting between his eyes. He wasn't certain the other man had even noticed his mask was missing, let alone that he'd been shot in the head.

"Yeeeaah...right. A-anyway, you've errrr...well, you've been stuck here for like, a year. Kept alive by whatever weird energy the Vaults give off. And I landed here after opening a different Vault, soooo..."

He was interrupted by a peel of raucous laughter from Jack. The man nearly fell backwards laughing, arms wrapped around his torso.

"A-a Vault? _You? _You opened a Vault? What, are they just handing the Keys out these days?"

The younger man's face prickled and burned red in indignation at Jack's response. He'd changed his mind. AI Jack had been a _brilliant _copy of this asshole.

"I tell you you've been asleep for a _year, _but you think me opening a Vault is weirder?"

"Well...yeah! I mean, look at you! You're a beansprout with a nice hairdo!"

There wasn't even any point getting mad at Jack. If the other man was anything like his AI, (which Rhys was pretty sure by now that he was), he would neither notice nor care for the retorts. It was a waste of energy and effort on Rhys' behalf.

"I shoulda left you asleep."

"Yeah actually, about that, been meaning to ask: how did you wake me up? Did you kiss me, Prince Charming?"

"What?!"

"Hey no, I'm not upset about it. Actually, I'd be more upset if you didn't try that. But it's just you kinda remind me of a guy who used to work for me, _real _weirdo, used to order a copy of _every _poster of me that Hyperion printed. Not even company-issued ones, but he was always top of the order list. _Suuuuuch_ a dweeb, seriously — hey wait, where are you going?!"

Spurred by a mixture of ire, irritation, and embarrassment, Rhys had started walking aimlessly away before his brain had chance to catch up. Behind him, he heard Jack getting unsteadily to his feet, scuffling and giving a yelp as an eye-shock kept him duly conscious. "H_e-e-e_y, where are you even going? You don't know how to get out of here without me, right?"

"Yup. And I'm _still _choosing to walk away!" Rhys called over his shoulder.

"**_Hey, get back here!_** — What the?!"

It took a moment for Rhys to realise that, although it had sounded like Jack had suddenly lost his mind entirely (or, more accurately, to the final point of losing the ability to form coherent sentences), the two exclamations had come from two different Jacks.

Whirling around, Rhys saw the real Jack staggering back in shock as the blue hologram of his artificial self flickered in front of him, staring pointedly after Rhys.

"We had a deal, cupcake! I keep him awake, _you _get him to get us all out of here!" The AI yelled over at Rhys, before glancing over his shoulder at Jack. "Hi. I'm Jack. The better one. You should consider a cybernetic skeleton, by the way. It would make everything way easier if the smarter one of us was in charge."

Jack visibly reeled, his eyes darting once to Rhys, then back to the projection. Then, quite suddenly, he relaxed, as though everything had suddenly settled into place and made complete sense to him.

"Ah, goddammit, I _knew_ letting Nakayama finish that project was a bad idea. I was gonna kill him before he did, but I got a little sidetracked and..._urgh_, digital backups. Diet soda of immortality, am I right?" He smirked over at Rhys, and jabbed a thumb towards the AI hovering between them. "Seriously, look at the state of this thing. It doesn't even _sound _like me, like c'mon, I am _not _obnoxious and stupid-sounding like this thing, man...did Nakayama build you outta some old Claptrap AI or something, Dum-Dum?"

AI Jack's eyes narrowed at Jack, before he turned politely to face Rhys.

"...I'm gonna kill him."

"No no no! Don't!" Rhys darted forward, hands outstretched as though he could stop the AI. He didn't want to find out how the malicious program would attempt to murder his origin, but he didn't want to risk it either.

"Kill me?" Jack scoffed. "I could_ wink_ and you'd cease to exist, moron."

"Just you try it, fleshbag, and I'll pop your fricking ey—"

Handsome Jack winked at Rhys. And just like that, the projection of AI Jack disappeared.

"You got some explaining to do, Prince Charming, 'cause that wasn't there when I got here," Jack said, tapping his left temple next to his now-closed eye. "Start with telling me how to remove it, because it is going _crazy_ back there electrocuting my eyeball right now. And honestly, it's excruciating."

The day had been long, unkind, and Rhys was really about ready to curl up in bed and not wake up for several days. The thought kept him going.

"Walk, talk, promise not to try and kill me?" Rhys offered, exasperated. They would be trapped here forever if he had to keep stopping to regale Jack with his tale. Jack looked thoughtful for a second, then shrugged.

"Ceasefire it is. Start talking," Jack commanded, striding past Rhys with more than a little waver in his step to give away that he was running on little more than fumes and pain at this point.

As they walked across the barren wasteland of the Vault, Rhys recounted his tale to Jack. There was little reason to lie, and Rhys wasn't wholly sure whether or not the AI would have objected and intervened if he had attempted to. So, he told Jack the truth — of his woes at Hyperion after Jack's apparent fall. Of Vasquez, Henderson, Vaughn...of his time on Pandora and stumbling into AI Jack in Nakayama's ID drive. Their return to Helios, and its fall.

The latter broke Jack's stride. A brief flash of grief, and longer flash of fury directed at Rhys, but without the energy to follow it through with any real threat. Every ounce of energy was reserved for walking, surviving, and getting out of here. But Jack had not taken kindly to hearing of the literal fall of his empire by Rhys' actions. And Rhys was under no illusion — Handsome Jack would remember that. His anger had qwuelled a little too quickly though, and Rhys was left to deal with an unnervingly calm and quiet Jack. Perhaps he was mourning the loss Hyperion, he though to himself. Rhys continued his story, though it was mainly to distract himself from the oddly even-keeled man walking beside him.

He spoke of the Traveler, how they had eventually killed the Guardian and its treasure had manifested as a literal chest. How he had opened it, the light, the voice...and then he was here. Rhys neglected to mention Angel, though he wasn't sure for who's benefit that truly was: Angel's, Jack's, or his own.

An uncomfortable silence settled between the two unusual strangers.

"...The Vaults are connected. Like a hive," Jack said suddenly, his voice dulled of its usual fire, his one open eye looking a little unfocused. "Each one is connected to one or two others...and all of them are connected to the Great Vault. Musta been your Vault was connected to this one. This one'll be connected to another Vault too, and they all have a door to the outside world, obviously. Not that that's gonna help us here."

"Why's that?"

"I studied the Vaults for years. The power of the Vaults? It's the Guardians inside 'em. They're the power. If they die or leave their Vault, the power goes. What happens to powered doors if the power goes out?"

Rhys nearly tripped over his feet.

"Wait wait, _what? _You mean we're _locked _in here? The doors...won't open at all?"

"The door to the outside world won't, for sure. But lucky for us, even though there's only one door leading to the outside world, there's at least one other door connected to another Vault. If I'm right, the Warrior isn't dead. This Vault and its entrance are inactive 'cause the Guardian's sauntered off to another Vault...and a guy that big and angry?"

Jack led them over a rocky hillock, struggling himself to clamber over it. Once they reached the lip of the mound, however, Rhys could see a beautiful yet terrifying sight. The arching stone of a Vault door, slightly larger than the one he'd seen when entering the Vault of the Traveler from the outside world, was yawning before them. It was all but torn apart, ripped and smashed open. Through it, Rhys could see what look like a plush and overgrown jungle, a stark contrast to the barren volcano they were standing in. "Big angry guys don't close the door after them. They tear it off its fricking hinges."

* * *

**AN: Thank you so much for the reviews so far! Much appreciated!  
**


	4. Chapter 4

"It's...still around, you know."

Rhys found his voice enough to offer the bland condolence to Jack. He wasn't quite sure why he felt the need to, but the stoic silence between them as they trudged towards the open portal to the neighbouring Vault was beginning to press on him. It didn't matter that he didn't _need _to feel bad — the fact was Rhys _did _feel kind of bad. Sure, working for Hyperion had been a slog, but it had been a valuable one. It had led him to Atlas after all, and Rhys had already poured blood, sweat, and tears into building it up from ruins. He'd be crushed to see it, well, crushed into the ground like Helios was.

Jack didn't so much as look at him, let alone acknowledge Rhys has spoken. Then again, he was staggering slightly ahead of Rhys, one eye shut, and being kept conscious by the graces of an AI having an electrical tantrum behind his eyelid. Rhys imagined the AI floating around Jack with such accuracy of recall that he could have sworn he saw the blue figure appear before him, probably winding Jack up as much as he did to Rhys back when he was the only person who could see the program. He hadn't considered that curse when plugging the ECHOeye into Jack's cybernetic lens — then again, Rhys hadn't known AI Jack could project himself so other people could see him. That would have been useful _months _ago to save Rhys looking like a madman.

"Is err...is he giving you a hard time?"

"You mean am I debating ripping my eye out? Yeah, it's crossed my mind a few times, and I'm keeping a score of each time it does, cupcake," Jack rounded on Rhys then, jabbing a finger sharply into the hollow between Rhys' shoulder and collarbone. "'Cause that's how many times I'm gonna shoot _your_ stupid face for plugging this thing into my eye. Just as soon as I find a gun. Or a stapler."

"H-Hey, if I didn't, you'd still be asleep here! Wasting away!" Rhys retorted, though he wondered if Jack could hear his heart hammering in fear. It felt like it was pounding in his damn throat like a weird beat to his own voice. "Look, just ignore him, he gets bored if you do that. If he starts floating in front of you, seriously, just walk through him, he gives up after a while."

Jack stepped back a little, tilting his head to the side. It was strange, Rhys thought to himself, how he'd seen that exact motion for confusion from Angel a little while ago. It was kind of funny to see that they both had the same little tic.

"Are you kiddin' me? I can't _see _him now, moron — what, did you think I was walking around doing my best impression of a pirate for the funsies?" Jack snapped, pointing at his closed eye. "He's just electrocuting the shit out of my eyeball, thanks to you. Oh, and you ran my fucking company into the ground, so score two for you, champ! Well done! Level up! Champagne all round! Hope you like the taste of bullets!"

With that, Jack turned and stomped away again, crossing over the threshold of the door to the next Vault and leaving Rhys stunned. Jack...couldn't see the AI? The AI had given no indication that he wanted to behave, much less for his living original. What the hell was he playing at?

He was jolted from his musing by a female voice:

"You could see him without a hologram projector?"

Rhys gave a hiss of shock and flinched forward, turning to see Angel hovering by his shoulder. She offered him a smile by means of apology. "Sorry! I wanted to see if it worked for me too."

Rhys whipped his head back to Jack. The man was walking off through to the next Vault, nearly out of sight. And with him, his cloaking device where Angel's digital back-up was stored. Rhys snapped back to Angel. There was no way she was projecting from the device from here.

"_Whaaaaat_ the hell?" He stammered, watching as she began to walk slowly towards the Vault door.

"C'mon. I can't stray too far, even like this," she said, beckoning Rhys with a wave of her hand. "But this is good! This means I can talk to you and he can't see me, right?"

"I-If you're doing the same thing AI Jack did then...I guess? No one else could see him back then. But he was plugged into _my _cybernetics. You're not. How am I seeing you?" Rhys asked, jogging to close the gap between them then walking with Angel through the Vault door. A wave of sticky heat hit him like a wall, and immediately sweat began to bead under his shirt and down his neck.

"I'm not sure. Anyone can see a hologram, it's just light. But this? This is new. No one should be able to _see _a program like this. That's why we have robots and projectors — to give programs a physical form. Otherwise, we're just like ghosts. So I don't think this is me. I think this might be _you_."

"Oh good, well, that answers precisely nothing," Rhys muttered to himself.

"I guess...put it this way. Nakayama couldn't see the AI of my father that he created. He had a few holograms but that was it. He installed the program into his cybernetics once, but the only way he could communicate with it was to give it access to cybernetic limbs. Then it tried to strangle him."

"Sounds about right," Rhys agreed, remembering the times the malicious AI had done precisely that to him. "But...yeah, AI Jack could use my cybernetics, but even if he wasn't using them, I could _see _him. And I can see you."

"We'll figure it out," Angel smiled over to him, keeping them on track to following her father through the jungle-sprawling Vault. "But for now, please don't tell Jack you can see me. This...this is good. I can talk to you without him knowing but...but if he finds out, he'll probably—"

Rhys half-smiled.

"He's already lined up several bullets, a strangulation, and probably a few staples to my name. But sure, no, I won't tell him."

"Thank you. Oh, and Rhys?"

"Yeah?"

"Watch out for that ledge."

With that, Angel disappeared and Rhys keeled forward sharply, arms waving. The toes of his boots had found the edge of a cliff face, and he had been so focused on Angel's AI that he'd nearly walked right off the edge.

"GAH! Wo-oa-ah!" He managed to throw his weight backwards and away from the ledge. Scanning the other side of the crevice, Rhys spotted Jack getting to his feet unsteadily. "Y-you _jumped _that?!"

"Yup. You should totally try it. But don't do a run-up or anything. I wanna see you drop like a stone down there," Jack called over, pointing down into the gorge between them. Rhys didn't give him the satisfaction of looking down.

"S-screw you!"

"Hey, it's cool. You don't have to jump. You can just stay there and starve or something. See ya!"

Jack began to walk away, and as he did, Rhys' panic rose.

"Wait! Wait, Jack, wait! H-how do I get across?!"

"_Byeeeee!_"

"I—"

He could try and jump it, right? Rhys peered over the edge of the cliff and _oh_ was that a mistake. He felt his stomach lurch up and plummet down into the depths. He could get Jack to stay. Five words would bring the man back and ensure he moved heaven and hell to get Rhys over this gap. The promise was still fresh on his tongue and yet, he was about to break it.

Rhys thought of Angel. If he didn't...if he didn't, he'd die here. He'd starve, and Jack would keep walking fuelled by nothing but stubborn pride. The starving man would likely collapse in the jungle soon, and they'd all die here, Rhys, Jack, Angel, all dead.

_Angel, I'm sorry...god, I'm the worst…_

"I know where Angel is!" Rhys cried out, voice twisted taut with guilt even as he spoke.

Jack stopped. Rhys' heart stopped. He immediately regretted saying anything, not only because of the rekindled anger in Jack's face as he returned to the cliff side opposite, but in knowing he'd become just another person to have let Angel down.

"How. Does an Atlas _code-monkey. _Know about _**my** daughter_?" Jack demanded. "Tell me where the little traitor is in what's left of my fricking company, and maybe, just _maybe_, I'll spare you those bullets!"

Technically, he hadn't told Jack that he could _see _Angel. And yet, a promise held together on a technicality didn't do much to soothe Rhys' guilt.

"Help me get over there and I'll tell you who told me."

"Oh, you son of a...fine! Take a running jump at it, fuck, with those drifter-legs you'll probably clear the length of the whole damn Vault anyway. But on the off-chance you don't, I'll catch you."

"_What?!" _Rhys felt a thousand per cent less safe at the idea of relying on Handsome Jack to _catch _him. "No way, you'll throw me in!"

"Well that depends on whether or not you fess up on who told you about Angel, cupcake."

That was what worried him. The answer to that question was more than likely going to see Jack dump Rhys face-first into the pit. But he wasn't willing to betray Angel completely. And so, hanging on to what little left he had to comfort himself that he was doing the right thing, Rhys paced back to give himself a sufficient run-up.

"Okay, you got this Rhys…you got this, **_hoo_**, you got this, _**haa**..._" He exhaled twice, trying to psyche himself up, bouncing on the tips of his toes as though that would limber him up at all.

Swallowing, praying, and then running full-pelt towards the cliffedge, the muscles in Rhys' legs screamed in collective regret as he got to the edge and leapt forward, the ground abandoning his feet and leaving him careening through the air, arms flailing, hands already trying to grab the opposite side which was —

— _just _an inch from his fingertips.

"Fuuuuuuuck!" Rhys screamed, missing the edge trying to grab at anything at all to stop his inevitable fall. Thanfull, his arm managed to get a hold of something. A huff of frustration sounded above him and Rhys, hanging on by one arm, slammed painfully into the side of the cliff. Dangling for a moment and trying to calm his heartbeat and ragged breathing, Rhys looked up, face painted in eternal gratitude. Jack was lying on his front over the side of the cliff, one arm having caught Rhys' arm to stop him from falling to his death.

"_Language_, kiddo."

"I...It's Rhys..."

"What?"

"M-my name! I-It's Rhys!"

"Why the _hell _are you telling me that right now?!"

"I dunno! I'm panicking! Maybe you won't drop me if you know my name?!"

"What kind of dumbass logic is that?!"

"I DON'T KNOW JUST PLEASE PULL ME UP!"

One long, horrible second ticked by and Rhys wondered if Jack was debating letting him go. He probably was. Rhys looked up again, noting to his horror that Jack's face was paling nearly grey, arm shaking, lips parting as he huffed air into his lungs.

_He's got no energy, _Rhys thought, his mind strangely logical and calm given the situation he was in. _Even the fumes are used up. __He's gonna drop me and I'm gonna die here. _

"I...I can't..." Jack admitted, the words like venom as though speaking them were an insult to himself. "Y-you gotta help yourself here too."

Quickly, Rhys twisted and turned, trying to get a grip on the cliff edge without loosening himself from Jack's failing grip. He managed to find an outcrop to hold onto with his cybernetic arm, and slowly began to pull himself up. Clambering over the side to safety, the two men knelt to catch their breath.

"Th-thanks..."

"Y'can buy m'dinner as...azzthanksss..." Jack slurred. Rhys looked up in time to see Jack's eye roll back and he slumped sideways. That last burst of effort had tapped the man of his pride-wrought energy and his stubborn-fuelled consciousness. Despite it trademarking him as a categorical pain in the ass, Rhys had to admit the man's stamina was pretty heroic.

Even as Jack fell motionless to the floor, Rhys could still hear the dull snapping and crackling of electricity as the AI performed his mini-torture on Jack's eye.

"Hey, cut it out. I don't think that's gonna work now," Rhys said.

"Yeah no, this is just for the fun of it."

The AI glimmered to life next to Rhys. He was floating just above Jack, legs crossed, flashing a toothy grin at the other. "Actually, this is no fun when you can't hear me. Kinda miss you, Rhysie, not gonna lie, this me is super-boring. Man, are you the only one who can see me without a projection? Urgh, that's gonna be a sorry-ass existence for me. Load me into a projector or a holo-pad or something! I'll be your answer machine! _Hello, you've reached the secure line of Rhys Buttmunch, please leave a message_~"

Rhys rolled his eyes, moving over to the fallen Jack and hoisting him by the arm over his shoulders and then straightening up. The man was taller and heavier than Rhys, but he didn't need to carry him for long — just long enough to find them somewhere safe to rest.

"I'm gonna regret telling you this, but, I guess it's kinda _sad _hearing you talk to yourself," Rhys said, smirking at AI Jack. "I can still see you, Jack."

The AI visibly jumped and disappeared suddenly. Then, he was back, floating on the opposite side of Jack hanging off Rhys' shoulder.

"Woah, wait, _what?! _You could see me the whole time? Wow, I mean, after all we've been through, you kept that to yourself, huh."

"It's...not very consistent. Not that it ever was. I thought only your host could see you. Or if you projected out which, by the way, thanks for not thinking of doing that when you were in my ECHOeye. Coulda made me look _not _completely insane in front of all my friends but no, you do you Jack," Rhys grunted, dragging Jack along as they made their way slowly through the jungle.

"I didn't want them to see me, and if they had, you'd have had your head cut off. So you're welcome. And if I was ever an_ inconsistent_ part of your life, Rhysie-Cups, it was 'cause you got hit in the head a lot. You get hit in the head a lot for a guy who really can't afford to lose any more braincells."

That did it. Rhys stopped, lying the unconscious Jack down on the floor. He then turned, rummaging through the jungle foliage a little bit. AI Jack hovered over his shoulder.

"What are you looking at?" He whispered. "Why'd you go quiet?"

When Rhys emerged, he was holding the one thing guaranteed to shut AI Jack up. Rhys sat himself down on the mossy floor, and _stared _at the foraged item in his hand. Immediately, AI Jack gave a curling howl of despair.

"_Noooo! _No, not another _fucking _mushroom! It's a goddamn _mushroom, _Rhys! They can only achieve a certain level of _interest _and it's pretty fricking low! You already learned everything you could _possibly _need to know about mushrooms! Stop! Please! Okay, okay, I'll be nicer, yeah? I'll be nice, just seriously, can we go do _anything _else?!"

Rhys glanced over his shoulder at the wound-up AI.

"I bet there's _tonnes _of mushrooms in a jungle. I could stop and stare at every. Single. One."

"I will fucking tear-"

"Mushrooms are _really _fascinating."

"Okay, fine! I'll be nice! Is that what you want, you fucking jailer?"

Rhys lowered his hand for a moment, but then brought it back up to his eyeline, to an audible groan of agony from the AI.

"Hey, are these edible?"

"Bite it and find out."

* * *

Scanning the local flora with his ECHOeye had granted Rhys a decent pile of edible foods. A few mushrooms (much to AI Jack's chagrin), a strange-looking fruit that had a tough, deep purple outer shell but a sweet, fleshy orange inner, and a large white and pink flower whose centre poured a slightly sour, sugary nectar as refreshing as water. He gathered them up, having not strayed too far from Jack and requesting the AI version of the man to alert him of any danger. At the promise of not going on a mushroom-guided tour, ("I might not be stuck to you any more, but you're still the only person I can talk to. You need stories more interesting than fungus for me, Rhys."), he had agreed.

Now, the Atlas CEO was left with the awkward task of getting said foodstuff down Jack's throat without choking him.

"Alright...we got this," Rhys said to himself, sitting down and resting his back against a tree trunk. Then he pulled Jack up to sit up too, his back resting against Rhys' torso. The man's head drooped back, resting against Rhys' left shoulder. With his face so close to Rhys' own, it occurred to him how strange it was that Jack hadn't mentioned the loss of his mask yet. Rhys had assumed Jack would have been the vain type and would have been upset to find his mask gone, his face of scars on show without his knowledge. After all, who named _themselves _'Handsome' without having some overblown sense of vanity? And yet, the man hadn't said anything about it yet. If he had been upset at Rhys seeing his scars, he hadn't shown it at all.

"God, I hope you don't start choking," Rhys muttered, tipping the flower's nectar very slowly past Jack's lips. He figured a drink first would be best; it seemed logical. "Please don't start choking 'cause I was _not _trained in first aid." It was going far too smoothly for all of ten seconds, which was a record in Rhys' life. It almost lulled him into a false sense of security before Jack's whole body lurched and he started coughing, spitting up the nectar. "Ah! No no, seriously, I don't know the Heimlich!"

Rhys threw the flower down and tried to sit Jack up more, but the man had coughed himself awake. Spluttering, he slouched forward a little away from Rhys, hands splayed on the ground to steady himself. Jack looked back at Rhys, like a grumpy cat that had been rudely awoken from a nap. Rhys didn't move, but offered Jack a small, unsure smile.

"Er...good morning?"

"Oh my god..." Jack groaned, putting a hand to his temple. "You might just be the _dumbest _piece of shit I've ever met. And I've met a _lot _of dumb pieces of shit."

"A-are you _kidding _me?!"

"Nah, come on, think about it," Jack turned to look at him tiredly. "I said I was gonna kill you. I _passed out_, dum-dum. If you were any kind of smart, you'd have left me to die on that cliff side. You got what you needed to know from me: you know the Vaults are all connected up like a hive now. Why not kill me?"

Rhys' eyebrows shot up in alarm. Was Jack really _reprimanding _him for not _leaving him to die_? What kind of psychopath was he? Wait, he knew exactly the kind, but still.

"I'm kinda used to your talk," Rhys explained, as Jack's brow furrowed in confusion. "But you saved my life on that cliff. So I saved yours."

"That is _not _how the world works. In fact, that is how idiots like_ you_ get killed by bigger, smarter guys."

"No, I know. I've seen enough of Pandora to know that. But it's how _I _work so...you're welcome."

With that, Rhys got to his feet and brushed his trousers down, before heading over to the pile of foraged food. He picked up one of the fruits and threw it over to Jack, who caught it deftly. "Peel it before you try and eat it. I seriously don't know the Heimlich, so try not to choke on alien fruit. I'm gonna go see if there's somewhere more sheltered for us to rest tonight...today? I have no idea how days work in Vaults."

"Who told you about Angel?"

Rhys paused, the sudden question striking him as hard as a slap across the face. All the guilt of his half-broken promise hit him anew with all the grace of a freight train. Out of sight out of mind hadn't really worked out for him on that front.

"...You did," Rhys admitted, a hand coming up to the back of his head awkwardly. "Or, well, the _other_ you did." He tapped near his eye to indicate the AI now plugged into Jack's lens. "Maybe...you two should talk. You and AI Jack that is. You can always close your eye again if he pisses you off. Or look at a mushroom."

"Why would I look at a boring-ass mushroom?"

"_Eeeexactly_. Have fun catching up with yourself, and eat something, please."

With that, Rhys began to move away, venturing a little further out into the jungle. He hadn't been wholly lying — they did need a more secure area to sleep. But in truth, he needed to put some distance between him and Jack to speak with someone else.

"Angel?" Rhys half-whispered, pushing past another huge jungle leaf and side-stepping a rather violent-looking plant. "Angel? Can you hear me? I-I'm sorry. I didn't tell him I can _see _you though. I mean, he just thinks I know _about _you. So...so are we good?"

Nothing but silence greeted him.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Thank you for the reviews, you kind souls. **

* * *

The longer the silence stretched on, the more Rhys' guilt curdled in his stomach. Half of him argued internally that he hadn't betrayed Angel's trust at all — he hadn't told Jack he could _see_ her. But another part of him took hold of the silence and duly beat himself with it, berating himself for letting down a woman who he'd only just met, a woman who had trusted him.

"Angel, I'm sorry. I'm sorry but...but I needed Jack to help me! He still doesn't—"

At that moment, Rhys' voice was utterly drowned out by a loud, raw, and anguished wail. The man flinched forward, shoulder hunching, blood running cold, before he realised who had yelled.

"— _Jack_?!"

Turning so quickly that he nearly broke his own balance, Rhys ran back to where he had left the man to recover his strength. He wasn't sure why the sound set off such panic within him, such concern. In his mind, Rhys was at odds with so many different truths that he could not begin to debate the morality of it all at once.

One, he did not know Jack. The person Rhys had gotten to know far too well was, despite appearances, an utterly separate existence. A replica at best, but not the same person. No, Rhys had not met Handsome Jack properly before, and yet, in their brief encounter so far, he couldn't shake the feeling that he knew the man well. In a way, he did, which only made Jack's lack of familiarity back to Rhys seem all the colder.

Two, he did know Jack. Rhys knew so much about Jack. He was once his hero, and like any person who idolised another, Rhys had learned everything he could about the man. Jack was an expert programmer, a hero, a fighter. He was a successful businessman who had all but crippled the other corporations — those left standing were simply there at his whim to keep Jack entertained.

Then, Rhys had learned a little more about Jack. He was a psychopath: Jack always needed _something _to entertain him or occupy him. He had an apparent inability not only to feel guilt, but to even understand why he ought to feel guilty at all. Rhys had discovered this from the AI version of Jack, but everything of it began to seep into his idolised image of the real version and pull the threads of that once-magnificent tapestry.

Jack wasn't a hero, was he? He was a killer, and Hyperion were just lucky his targets at the time were people who intended to hurt the majority.

Jack wasn't a successful businessman, was he? He was just playing a game big enough to keep himself entertained, and that game was to crush others under his boots.

By all accounts, Rhys knew he ought to hate Jack. But it wasn't that simple; nothing ever was on Pandora, a world where the good guys killed as many people as the bad guys did. A world where everyone was trampling over someone, and the people at the top of each pile pointed at each other as the bad guys.

He ought to hate Jack.

But there was something that gnawed at the back of Rhys' mind. Flashes he'd seen in the AI's manner sometimes, so brief he might have missed it if the program hadn't been so closely connected to Rhys' self.

It was a horrible and beautiful truth that Rhys had no idea how to begin to unpick or make sense of.

And he certainly wasn't ready to give it a name yet.

* * *

Rhys crashed through the jungle foliage and managed to catch himself before landing in the pile of food he'd gathered earlier at their makeshift campsite. He found Jack sitting on the floor, hunched with his hands over his face, a stream of shouting muffled by his palms. Meanwhile, his AI counterpart was lounging in a branch nearby, laughing.

"This meatbag is _such _an _idiot_!" The AI snorted between bouts of laughter. "No wonder Hyperion needed to upgrade him with me!"

"What...what happened?" Rhys ignored the program's scathing assessment and tentatively crept towards Jack. "Are you er...are you okay?"

Jack lifted up a little, glaring out from between his fingers. It was enough to make Rhys wince back.

"Why didn't you _tell _me?!" Jack yelled, his voice hardly contained by the obstruction of his hands. Immediately, Rhys' head went into corporate-man-mode as he frantically went over the last thousand actions he'd done, trying to figure out which had been an error. He stopped, remembering that Jack wasn't the boss of him any more, and scowled, bottom lip jutting out.

"What are you talking about?"

"_My. Mask_," Jack growled. "Those flea-chewing _assholes_ who left me to _die _stole my goddamn mask!"

"And _you_," the AI piped up, "didn't notice."

Jack's simmering rage boiled over so quickly that Rhys gave a cry as other man suddenly twisted up to his feet. With one hand still covering his face, Jack grabbed a discarded fruit and hurled it at the AI in the tree. It soared through the AI copy, but he did at least have the good manners to look affronted.

"Shut. The _hell. __U__p_! I swear to god, when I get my hands on an ECHO device, you can kiss your second-rate code goodbye, Not-Me!" Jack yelled, whirling then to pin Rhys under his fury. "Is Nakayama still alive?! I'm going to fricking kill him! I'm going to recode this piece of _crap _he put _my _face and voice on, make it look like _him_, and shove it into his cybernetics so hard that when I _do _kill him, the crappy AI version of him will haunt him in the afterlife! Seriously, a fricking _skag _rolling over a keyboard could code a more accurate me!"

Rhys looked between the AI and Jack. Given they were both wearing identically-offended expressions (as best as Rhys could tell from Jack's attempts to hide his face), it was only by the grace of Jack's rage keeping Rhys' terror levels moderated that he didn't laugh.

"Errr, I'll ask about Nakayama once we get out of the Vaults," Rhys lied, wondering if a display of cooperation would calm the real Jack as much as it had the AI in the past. "But...well...how come you _didn't _realise before?"

"The mask is grafted to my face, dum-dum. What, you think I walk around sweating out my eyebrows under there? Fits better than a second skin. Like it isn't even there. Because I fricking designed it!" Jack grumbled, his anger lowering enough to brag coherently. "The only difference is _usually _I can't see outta both eyes without my mask. But _you _shoved an ECHO eye on me, so I _can_ see, so I _didn't notice my mask was gone and __**you should have told me!**_"

His voice began to rise again, and Rhys' feet began to pace backwards before he realised he was moving away from Jack, hands up in front of him.

"I-I didn't think it was that important!" Rhys protested, "Like, compared to _literally everything else _that was happening? Finding Handsome Jack with a bullet between his eyes, still alive in a Vault? Yeah, a missing mask was low on the priorities."

Jack, who had been walking towards Rhys as quickly as the man had been backing away, stopped. The muscles in his shoulders visibly loosened, and for a moment, he seemed completely calm.

"...Wait, what? I got—"

Whatever sense of self-consciousness had caused Jack to cover his face was tossed away like a toy he'd grown weary of as the man moved his hand from covering his face to instead paw at the space between his eyebrows. "—holy_ shit,_ I got_ shot in the head?!" _

Rather than upsetting the man, this was a source of joy that Rhys could not begin to understand. Jack was laughing, touching the bullet-hole scar that overlapped and connected with the large, blue scar that split his face. Just like the larger one, the newer scar was also the same vivid blue colour.

"Oh-ho-ho-ho_ man!_ Who needs half-ass digital immortality, I'm_ invincible_!" Jack laughed, turning to his AI counterpart. "See that? Don't need ya! Caught a bullet with my_ face_ and I'm still alive!"

"Didn't see it happen, gonna have to prove it," the AI drawled, nodding over to Rhys. "Hey Rhysie! Shoot _John _here right in the face, let's see if he can do it a second time."

Rhys opened his mouth to answer, but Jack cut him off:

"Alright, time for you to piss off like a good line of zeroes and ones, _buh-bye,_" he said, covering his left eye with his hand. The AI's form glimmered, dulling as the light projection was covered, and yet, he stayed sitting in the branch for Rhys. He looked over at Rhys, and shrugged.

"I mean, you could still shoot him," the AI said. "_Theeeeen _maybe install me back into your head?"

"Not even remotely tempting," Rhys replied, then clapped both hands over his mouth as he realised: Jack couldn't see the AI any more. And neither should he.

Indeed, the detail wasn't missed by the other man, whose eye narrowed.

"What?"

"Errr...I mean, y'know...he said to shoot you before you turned him off. I was just...y'know, _clarifying _for you that...that I wouldn't wanna shoot you anyway."

"Uh-_huh_..." Jack didn't sound entirely convinced, but the thread wasn't interesting enough for him to pull. He shrugged. "Anyway, I need my mask back. The sooner I can take this lens out and be the one-and-only, accept-no-substitutions Handsome Jack again, the better. For everyone! I mean," he bent down then to pick up another piece of fruit, taking a bite and munching on it thoughtfully, shifting his other hand to try and cover as much of his face as possible while keeping his left eye shut. "What, I was in that Vault a year? Man, no wonder I'm still starving, you know I've eaten like, twelve of these? Anyway, yeah, Pandora, probably gone to hell in a handbasket without me, right?"

Rhys pursed his lips. Well...technically, Jack wasn't wrong. Pandora was a complete mess, but whether or not the presence of lack thereof of Jack had anything to do with that was another matter. At this point, Rhys figured it was just a natural state of being for the planet.

"...Yes. Yes it has," Rhys answered. Jack had had a hard day. Couldn't hurt to stroke his ego, right? Almost as soon as he had justified it with that hapless logic, Rhys' mind collapsed in on itself — _**it couldn't hurt to stroke Handsome Jack's ego, was he out of his fricking mind?**_ "Oh my god, why did I say that?"

Jack's selective hearing opted to pay attention only to the first four words out of Rhys' mouth, and the CEO was beaming at him.

"Right? I can always count on my number-one super-fan weirdo, am I right? So! Now we're all safe and not-dead and not-starving, how about you chuck me your ECHO device and I'll kick start _this _bad boy," he gestured down to the digistruct device strapped to his right leg, "get myself a new mask, dodge that whole impending freak-out, find the door to the outside world, and then me and you, pumpkin? We're going to raise Helios off the ground! — Oh, yeah, digi-me filled me in on your shenanigans. Saves time and _whooole _lot of back-pedalling."

"I don't...have an ECHO device?" Rhys said, choosing to ignore the horror of wondering what kind of unreliable account the AI had given Jack of their time together. He never really carried a handheld ECHO device around. Why would he? He had enough tech on his person to render the handheld version completely void.

"Huh. Well, this thing's been out of juice for a while, so I gotta charge it off something. What wires are you hiding there, Charming?" Jack asked, circling over to Rhys and tapping his cybernetic arm. "Any I can borrow? Steal? Can I wire it up and steal some juice?"

"Look, stop calling me Charming!" Rhys swatted Jack's hand away. "Just— argh!—just pass me your digistruct and I'll charge it up a bit!"

"My man!" Jack beamed, then pulled a face. "Woah, where the hell did that come from? Whatever, right, here you go, don't break it, s'probably worth more than your entire company, Atl-_**ass**_."

He unbuckled the device from his leg and lightly chucked it over to Rhys. Rhys caught it, glowering at Jack a little for the insult to his company. Maybe they had that in common then.

"Right, sure, ask a favour with an insult, who taught you your way with words?"

"Self-made, baby."

Despite it all, Rhys was already unfastening a panel in his cybernetic limb to coax out one of the wires close to the robotic's power core. He managed to hot-wire it (probably dangerously), to the digistruct device and, after a few moments, the screen flickered to life.

"Aw..._crap_," Rhys muttered, tapping the side of the device against his arm with a_ clang!_ "Jack, it's not working."

"Huh?"

"The digistruct. It's charging up but the screen's dead. Must have gotten broken when you were in the Vault. Might be able to use the digistruct program on it if we hack into it and control it externally...yeah, you designed the mask, right? Okay, the ECHO eye I installed for you? It has a hacking program on it. You can use it to get into this. I'd do it but...honestly, kinda terrified what mask I'd end up making..."

Jack looked confused.

"Thought this used to be _your _ECHO eye?" He said, tapping against his closed left eye. "And presumably you got that fancy new one 'cause this one is bust?"

"What? No it—"

"Yes, it is. I already had a look around its files and programmes. Got some sweet Hyperion programs made by yours truly on here, Rhysie, but they're all locked and disabled. This thing's basically a glorified storage device for the big blue phoney."

_Disabled? When did…_

Rhys thought of all the times he'd used the ECHO eye's programs. They'd been working right up until he tore the thing from his eye.

"That doesn't make any sense. C-can you tell when it was disabled?"

"Why does it matter? Broke's broke. Look, startin' to feel a little naked without my mask here, can you just—"

"It matters!"

_It matters because if it wasn't working this whole damn time…_

"You didn't figure it out?"

Rhys looked up at AI Jack then. The program had been strangely quiet, watching the pair down below as they squabbled. Rhys quickly looked away, remembering that, to Jack at least, he would be staring at nothing. The AI continued: "The universal remote, remember? Wallethead cracked one out at the Atlas facility, shut down your Loader Bot? That thing's like a little EMP, it shuts down _all_ Hyperion tech in the area. Including your ECHO eye. You seriously didn't catch that?"

The AI hopped down from his perch, disappearing before he hit the ground. He reappeared at Rhys' side, smiling. "I upgraded your hacking program the first time we ran into Wallethead and you used it all on your own, remember? But the second time, I asked to take control to do it. 'Cause the Hyperion hacking program was disabled, so _I _replaced it with me! I recoded myself to be a hacking program too! 'Cause I'm smart! I'm a coder made out of code, built to hack with Jack! I replaced all your disabled programs. Seriously, you never noticed? C'mon, I made one called _Jackapedia _so I could talk to you with text, how did you not catch that?"

Rhys silently stared, trying not to give away that the AI was blowing his mind while invisible to Jack.

"Listen, it doesn't matter," the real Jack said, looking decidedly uncomfortable with Rhys' manner. "They probably just revoked your access to company programs when you started acting out."

_You're Hyperion property, Rhys. And Hyperion doesn't lose track of its property_. Rhys recalled Vasquez's words. Of course he'd had his ECHO eye disabled. It was Hyperion property. They'd revoked his ID, his clearance; why had it never occurred to him that it was strange the company continued to let him use their programs?

This whole time, his eye cybernetic had been nothing more than an expensive storage for AI Jack to live in.

"J-just a second. I err...I have...to go pee," Rhys stammered, backing up then darting away from Jack. He scrambled through the undergrowth, fuelled by fear and confusion. Once he was far enough away that he was sure Jack wouldn't hear him, Rhys stopped. "Alright, what is going on? You're saying the ECHO eye didn't work? The hacking, that was all you?"

AI Jack appeared in front of Rhys, hanging upside-down from a branch by his legs.

"Yup. You're welcome, by the way."

"A-and the scanning? When I could see important stuff? Wires underground, th-th-the powerpacks, _**you**_, like...all of that? That was you?"

AI Jack's head tilted a little.

"Errr..._noooo_. No, I didn't make a scanning program. My attention span is _way _too short to make me a good scanning program, cupcake. Hacking though, that's my jam! I just needed you to open ports and let me out on the network to go wireless and scramble code up! And I made Jackapedia so when your friends were nearb, they didn't hear you talking to yourself. Yeah, I made a way for us to _communicate in silence_, and what did you do? You stared at mushrooms, ya big weirdo. But yeah no, if you were seeing things, that's on you and your doctor. And possibly the mushrooms, depending on whatcha did."

"_Jack!_"

"Hey, no judgey! We've all tried 'shrooms."

Rhys' blood pulsed cold in his veins, his heart lurching and hammering and cold sweat crept down his neck and spine. Panic? No, this wasn't panic. This was a full-blown existential, identity, spiritual, mental crisis. He could _see _wires through the ground. He could _see _the power boxes to switch on and discover the Gortys project location. He could _see _AI Jack. How?

Angel's words echoed in his mind.

"_No one should be able to see a program like this. That's why we have robots and projectors — to give programs form and physicality. So I don't think this is me...I think this might be **you**." _

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Being able to see exactly where he needed to go. Finding what he needed to progress. Not being able to break the firewall on Vasquez's computer; the bloody hacking program hadn't even initiated, he had been manually trying to break it without realising until AI Jack had stepped in.

Searching out Gortys' upgrades among a heap of junk. Hell, even sometimes in the heat of a fight, Rhys had thought it was the adrenaline that made people seem to move in slow motion for him...

"So...so _you're _not Hyperion tech?" Rhys blurted out. Anything to shift the focus from himself. AI Jack blanched so violently he fell off his hanging perch and landed in a crumpled heap of glimmering blue and code.

"Wha— hey, woah, my existence is hard enough to deal with!" AI Jack got to his feet, irritably brushing off invisible dust from his clothes. "Don't go dropping the '_Y__ou're Adopted' _line on me now too!"

"But you can't be Hyperion tech!" Rhys protested, "Or you'd have been disabled too!"

"I—I mean I...I guess? But I wasn't exactly on the official records, Rhysie. Nakayama probably made me out of Hyperion tech, he just...y'know, didn't officiate it," the AI tried to explain, twirling his hand as though that would swat the doubts away.

Great. Not only was Rhys himself questioning his entire sense of sanity and self, but now he'd given the unstable AI another existential crisis to deal with.

"Right, okay, yeah, probably. Yeah, you know what, you're definitely Hyperion, don't worry about it," Rhys conceded, deciding this wasn't an argument he had the energy for right now. "Listen, if I plug you into the digistruct, will you make a mask for —"

"_**Don't!**_"

Flicking to life in front of Rhys, nose inches from his own, Angel's angry face brought a yelp of fear from the man.

"Gah!"

"_Angel?!_"

Both Rhys and AI Jack fell backwards in shock of her arrival, but she ignored the AI in favour of withering Rhys with a look. "I can't stop him telling my father now. That's how _bad _the idea of putting _him_ in the digistruct device is," Angel said, jerking a hand to gesture behind to AI Jack. "Did you stop to think before coming up with that plan, Rhys?"

Admittedly, he had not. A thousand issues were slamming into Rhys' head every second and honestly, he thought he was doing pretty well, all identity crises considered. Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

"Eh...okay, yeah, didn't think that through. He'd probably...digistruct an army of Loader Bots or something..."

Rhys opened one eye to look at AI Jack. Where was his retort? It was two seconds late to firing Rhys down. But the AI looked shell-shocked, staring at Angel.

"Y-you're al..."

"I'm not," Angel snapped, not even looking over her shoulder at the AI. "And you're not either." She then turned her attention fully to Rhys once more. "Listen...ask my father for his cloaking device and connect me to the digistruct. Normally, I'd be able to move between devices myself but...his cloaking device is completely dead. I can't get out without you opening a door for me. Let me go into the digistruct and I'll fix it from there. I'll digistruct the mask to keep my father calm...or, at least, as calm as he gets."

"He seems fine at the moment, to be honest."

"That's...what worries me. His mask became his identity...his stability, or what little left he had. Jack can snap at the slightest thing at the best of times, and without his mask, he'll be even more volatile. We need him focused, Rhys. We need to get out of the Vaults, and as much as I wish we didn't, we need Jack focussed to do that."

"I'm...right here..."

Rhys's jaw tensed as he did his best to ignore AI Jack's small plea. He locked eyes with Angel, seeing her doing the same thing.

"Angel...I-I'm sorry about—"

"I know. I know why you did it. It just...stung. I forgive you, but please, _please_ do not put him in the digistruct. I'll do it."

AI Jack moved then, flickering into existence next to Angel.

"Look, just...just give me a chance! Rhys, let me stretch my legs and go to the digistruct device! If you do, I swear, I will not tell the other me about Angel. Yeah? I'll make the idiot his mask and I'll keep quiet about Angel, I promise. Just trust me!"

"Rhys, don't listen to him!" Angel spoke up, casting a sidewards scowl at AI Jack. "You can't trust him. He's all the worst parts of my father put to code by a mad scientist who barely knew him! Please! Don't give him that kind of power — let me handle the digistruct."

Rhys looked between them, once again battered by a thousand possible outcomes. Or, really, just two: trust Angel and keep a malicious program from getting hold of digistruct technology, but expose her secret to Jack? Or trust AI Jack and keep Angel's secret safe, but give the AI the power to create weapons of his own?


	6. Chapter 6

Rhys looked at Angel. He looked at AI Jack. Both of the digital beings stared back at him, though Rhys sensed a ticking clock above AI Jack counting down to his inevitable loss of temper.

"You can't be serious," Rhys said, still darting a glance between the two of them. Without hesitation, he gestured at Angel with an open palm. "I mean, I'm gonna trust Angel, obviously. Because I'm not _completely _insane."

Angel gave a little celebratory dance, both hands shooting up in the air as AI Jack's shoulders slumped in defeat, jaw dropping in shock.

"_What?! _Are you freaking kidding me?" The program yelled, voice distorting for the volume of it. "You're throwing away _months _of friendship and all we've been through for a girl you _just met_? Rhysie, honestly, I'm more disappointed than heartbroken. I didn't think you were as dumb as those Vault Hunters who just followed Angel's voice without question 'cause she asked nicely, but you? Seriously?"

"It's _because _I'm not dumb that I'm not trusting you again," Rhys countered, folding his arms and shifting his weight to his other foot as he regarded to sulking AI. "I trusted you before and look where that got me!"

"What, _alive?"_

"Only because you wanted to shove a metal skeleton in my body and _take over my entire being!_"

"Don't change the subject! I saved your ass at every turn, you little shit!"

"That's _not _changing the subject, Jack! This is literally the subject we are discussing! I trusted you to help me and yeah, you did, but _only because you wanted to turn me into a Jack-Puppet!_"

"Oh use your _head_, Rhysie, _please_, if only for my fucking blood pressure!" AI Jack lamented, making a show of holding his head in his hands. "I coulda shoved that skeleton and uploaded myself into anyone! I _told you that_! I just thought...y'know, if we were both ruling Hyperion, it made sense to both have the same body! I didn't keep you alive for that, it was just the most logical next step when we got to Helios! And yeah, of course I'd have control of it, I've ran a company before, it's just smart business moves."

"The most logical—?!" Rhys had to stop and inhale before the pressure in his head threatened to knock him clean out. He drew in a deep breath, holding his palms together in front of his face and closing his eyes for a moment. "Okay...firstly, going from 'let's run a business together' to 'let's run a body together' isn't just a leap in logic, Jack. It's an Olympic long-jump in insanity. Second of all, _you've _never ran a company before. You lived in a storage drive before I found you."

At that, AI Jack visibly recoiled, lip curling into a grimace.

"Wow. Y'know, I think I liked you better when I was the only Jack you knew. This whole _him and me_ differentiation? Sorta giving me a weird vibe, Rhysie. You used to treat me like the real deal, remember ? Now suddenly you meet the flesh-and-blood guy and start treating me like...like I'm not real? Like I'm not Jack enough to help you any more?"

"You're Jack enough that I'm not gonna trust you if that makes you feel any better."

Rhys almost regretted saying that. Almost. He watched as the AI scowled at him, a glimmer of genuine hurt reflecting in his eyes before he disappeared without a sound. With more than a slight air of awkwardness, Rhys turned to Angel.

"S-sorry about that."

"Don't be. You two...have a lot to work out, it seems," Angel offered with a small smile.

"Not as much as you'd think. Just one _big_ thing. But...I guess he's kind of right. Before I met Jack properly, he was the only version I'd ever met. I guess I did treat him like the real Handsome Jack because I sorta...wanted him to be? Wanted that chance to meet my hero, you know? But now I've met the living, breathing guy...I don't know how to feel about the other Jack now. Should I even feel bad? He's an AI, he doesn't actually, you know...have feelings, right?"

Rhys' mouth ran away with his thoughts, and halfway through he had almost forgotten Angel's presence as he monologued his own mind to himself more than anything. Before he realised how insensitive he sounded, he'd spoken the words. He then clamped a hand over his mouth in shock.

"Oh! Er, well, I mean...maybe artificial intelligence doesn't...have...ah, god, I'm sorry...I forgot you're sorta...the same...deal..." he trailed off, gesturing at Angel.

"Not as much as you'd think," Angel smirked, parroting his previous utterance to him cheekily. "I'm not a program like AI Jack. It's a little more complicated than that with me. Siren perks, I suppose."

"What do you mean?" He asked, starting to get to work unfastening panels on his cybernetic arm to scavenge a connecting wire they could use for their next task. Angel floated a little closer, hands behind her back as she watched with some curiosity at Rhys working.

"My power as a Siren was over technology. Even when I had a living body I could phase through the digital world around us. Most people can't even see it without devices connected to it. But I can. Part of that power meant I could upload my consciousness into that world. I wasn't born from code...I was born like you. I was alive. I'm just stored in code now instead of DNA. It's...kinda of a choice unique to me. But AI Jack, he _was _born of code. He was never alive like you and I. So we're a little different; we're just both living in the same world right now."

Rhys, who had been halfway to unfastening his arm, nearly dropped the limb in shock.

"W-wait, so you're...actually Angel? You're not a program version?"

"Exactly. That's...kind of why I didn't want Jack knowing about it," Angel wrapped an arm around her torso, a hand clamping over her opposite arm. "He studied Sirens for years. He'd have figured it out in a heartbeat that I was the real Angel, just stuck in a digital form. He'd try to find a way to get me out of here and back into the real world."

"Would that be such a bad thing? I mean, you must be kinda lonely in there if I'm the first person to see you since you...err...died?"

"All I've ever wanted is to be in the real world. But I didn't even get that when I was alive within it."

Rhys managed to find a wire that would connect to both the cloaking device and the digistruct device. But the sorrow in Angel's confession brought him to pause as he set about reattaching his arm.

"Yeah I...guess it was kinda weird. I noticed your photo on his desk but no one at Hyperion ever mentioned Jack had a daughter. I guess he musta been worried you'd be a target. Musta sucked being kept out of sight like that."

Angel looked up at Rhys then, a story of a thousand words in her eyes and for a moment, it seemed, balanced at the edge of her lips. But, for whatever reason, she chose not to regale it to him.

"I think he thought of it that way once too...look, let's just get him cooperative. If AI Jack is going to tell him about me, you're going to need a bargaining chip. His mask is perfect for that, trust me."

No doubt Jack was the vain type and Rhys had to admit, he was pretty shocked to see the heavy scarring under the mask when he found the de-masked man lying in the Vault. He wasn't ugly by any means, but Rhys could definitely see Jack taking offence to the scarring on his own face. As he walked back to the clearing, Rhys imagined how the man would respond if he suggested he ditch the mask and they just carry on looking for a way out of the Vault: _It doesn't fit, Rhysie! Look at me! Half my face is split apart and my eye's basically hanging out, y'think I can still sign checks as 'Handsome Jack' looking like this? Exactly. Dum-dum. _

As he headed towards what he thought was where he had left Jack, Rhys called out:

"Jack? You er...you good?"

Without a snappy response of bragging about Jack or insulting Rhys, it was difficult to tell if he was heading in the right direction. But soon enough, Rhys found himself back at the clearing. AI Jack was hovering in front of Jack, who had evidently made the mistake of opening his eye long enough for the program to speak to him. No doubt the animated conversation was surrounding Angel's unusual survival.

"Hellooo? Are you even listening to me? Gaddammit, you were pissed a second ago! Get mad!" AI Jack was yelling at his physical self. "We don't do this. You hear me? Handsome Jack doesn't — _zone out_ — he gets stuff done! He makes people pay who wrong him! He was gonna hide your _daughter _from you! Why—"

The program realised they had an audience and turned to see Rhys emerging from the underbrush. With a pet lip jutting firmly out, the AI folded his arms and promptly disappeared, leaving the Atlas CEO to face the strangely quiet Hyperion CEO.

Jack was standing a short distance from Rhys, but he didn't need to get any closer to see something was wrong. The man was breathing heavily, sweat beading on his brow, and Rhys could see the knuckles of his right hand were grazed and bloody. He didn't need to ask whether or not AI Jack had made good on his threat to tell Handsome Jack that Rhys had kept a secret from him. He could see that he had. And yet, the unblinking, unfocussed Jack before him was a far cry from what Rhys had expected.

"Should I run?" Rhys asked Angel, voice taut with nerves. Angel floated forward a little, looking sadly at Jack. It was the first time Rhys had seen her look at him with anything other than hatred or heartbreak.

"I haven't seen him do this for years...guess his AI didn't know. Or, really, his programmer didn't know."

Slowly, Rhys began to creep forward. Jack was looking at him, but he didn't seem angry. He didn't seem sad. He just didn't seem _anything_ right now. Rhys kept expecting him to suddenly fly into a rage, and it was keeping every muscle in his body tight and ready to spring away at any time.

"D-didn't know...what?"

"My father's illness," Angel answered.

"That Angel survived," Jack answered Rhys' question too, his voice dull and blunt.

_Crap_.

Trying to stay looking at Jack while signalling to Angel that he was addressing her was hard. Rhys cleared his throat, stopping just outside of arm's reach of Jack.

"What do you mean?"

This time, Jack didn't respond at all. Angel, meanwhile, hovered around to stand between Rhys and Jack, slightly off to the side of them.

"I think only me and Mom knew. And Nurse Nina, she was the one to spot it when he was younger but er...I guess it wouldn't be a shock for me to tell you my father has a mental health problem. Nurse Nina called it borderline personality disorder. Mom once told me to think of it like nerves.

"We have physical nerves under our skin so that if we touch our skin with something sharp, we feel it. It hurts. But if we took the layer of skin away and exposed the nerve and touched _that _with the same sharp object, it wouldn't just hurt. It would be agony.

"Same goes for our emotional nerves. We all have them. But Jack? He doesn't have any skin between his emotional nerves and the outside world. What should make him feel happy makes him feel elated. What should make him feel annoyed makes him feel furious. So when something is big enough that he should feel furious, he sometimes just...can't process it. He shuts down like this. He didn't do it a lot after he came back from Elpis."

"Elpis? Why Elpis? How Elpis?" Rhys asked, starting to back away again.

"I don't know. He just...wasn't the same after Elpis. Everything got dialled up to a hundred: his idea of heroism, his ego, his vendetta. This might be a good chance to swipe the cloaking device though," Angel mused aloud, looking closer at the device pinned to Jack's lapel. "And the mask will help calm him down."

"He seems pretty calm?"

"I mean when he snaps out of it and gets mad about it."

"Oh."

Rhys gulped, shuffling forward again. With his luck, Jack would probably snap out of his eerily even-keeled state just as Rhys was within strangling distance. The man was still looking past him, and he was pretty sure he hadn't seen Jack blink once since he'd come back to the clearing.

"H-heeey...Jack? You er...you good?" Rhys asked, inching closer. He had precisely zero idea how to help him. "You mind if I just...er...borrow your cloaking device for two seconds?"

He reached out to unpin the device from Jack's lapel and, halfway through doing so, Jack turned to look down at Rhys' hand as if he'd just noticed the other man move. It didn't appear as though the man had really heard his question. Rhys retrieved the device, but a twist of guilt in his heart made it so he couldn't just march off and get to work plugging the devices together.

"Angel, how can I...I mean, is there anything I can do to...help him?"

Angel seemed a little alarmed at the request, but something in her tone told Rhys she was impressed.

"Well...Mom used to have this necklace, the stone was a raw crystal. She'd make him hold it 'cause the cold and the texture sometimes snapped him out of it."

"Cold and textured..." Rhys muttered, pinning the cloaking device on his own jacket lapel for safe keeping and pocketing the digistruct device. "Ummm...right, okay, let's try, errr..."

After looking around for a while, Rhys looked down at his hands. "Aw man, he's gonna have a field day with this."

With his heart beating so hard he was pretty sure anything living in a 10 mile radius would be able to hone in on their location, Rhys reached out to take Jack's hand with his cybernetic one. He knew for a fact the metal ran cold — the amount of coolant this thing processed was crazy. He'd been known to rack up the coolant and shove a freezing cold cyber-hand down the back of Vaughn's neck for the giggles.

Ah, good times.

"Can you errr, can you feel that? S'cold, right?" Rhys asked, feeling more than a little embarrassed. Standing in a Vault jungle. With Handsome Jack. Holding hands. As his daughter looked on, basically giving him a thumbs up of encouragement. "Might be good if you have sweaty palms! N-not that I'd know. Can't get...sweaty palms...with a robot arm..." Rhys mumbled, trailing off again.

God, he felt dumb. He half wanted to strangle himself.

Then, ever so slowly, Jack's hand shifted in Rhys' grip. His fingers coiled a little tighter around Rhys' hand, fingertips shifting to find the bolts and ridges of the metal plates on his hand. After a few moment of this, Rhys started to see focus clearing back into Jack's eyes. He started responding a little swifter, looking when Rhys shifted or moved at all.

Then, finally, he blinked. Once, twice, rapidly. He frowned.

"...Rhys?"

"Jack?"

"I only need one hand to rip your throat out for not telling me you knew Angel is _alive_, dickwad."

"Wait—!"

Jack swung for Rhys with his free hand, missing by a hair's width as the younger man leap back, yanking his hand free of Jack's grip.

"_Get back here, you lying piece of fucking skag shit!_"

"Wait, seriously! Just stop a second and let me — gah!"

"Fricking bullshit_ '__**I know where Angel is**__'_, huh?! Didn't think to rephrase that to tell me she _survived_, you slimy little corporate ass-licker!"

Rhys could only be thankful that Jack didn't have a gun. The only thing keeping him alive against Jack's wrath right now was the fact that the older man couldn't catch him in order to strangle him at close quarters. With that in mind, Rhys ended up darting up a tree with all the grace of a cat that had been startled by a passing 18-wheeler. Jack revealed the source of his bloodied knuckles as he punched the tree trunk in frustration.

"Look, just—think about it! If you kill me, you're never gonna know where Angel is."

"Now you're_ holding her to ransom!?_ Oh ho-ho-ho...I am gonna enjoy rearranging your intestines, Atl-asshole!"

"_No! _I'm saying...argh, god, you're impossible! You're actually impossible to reason with!" Rhys despaired, clinging tightly to the tree branch. "I didn't even know she was alive till like, five seconds before AI Jack told you! I didn't lie, Jack, I knew where she was but I didn't know she was alive!"

"Then where is she?!"

"Promise you won't kill me?"

"I mean...you gonna believe me even if I say that?"

"...No."

"Smart. So, let's just be adults about this!" Jack offered, opening his arms out as though he'd embrace Rhys should he tumble down to the tree. "Clamber down here, we'll talk this out like men, consider all the angles, chew the fat, figure it out, and then I'll rip your ransom-asking lips off your face and shove 'em in your earholes so you can't hear yourself screaming when I unknot your intestines."

Rhys could feel the bile rising. God, he did not have the stomach for Jack's vivid and colourful threats. And soon, he would very literally not have the stomach due to Jack's threats.

Talking wouldn't get him anywhere. Jack didn't listen to words — however many differences and gaps in Nakayama's knowledge were now coming to light between AI Jack and the real Jack, they clearly shared some things in common. The sense that everyone was out to get them? That was a mutual trait. Anything Rhys said could and would be used against him.

He managed to pull himself up to sit on the tree branch more securely. Carefully, he pulled the digistruct device from his pocket and balanced it on his thigh. Then, he removed the cloaking device from his jacket (to a chorus of 'aw, you fricking _robbed _me too?!' below him) and set about connecting the two together with the mishmash of cabling he'd no doubt regret taking from his cybernetic arm later down the line.

The octagonal device hummed to life, and with a digital 'door' open, Rhys watched as Angel left the constrains of cloaking tech and headed to the digistruct. After a pause, the digistruct then spluttered to life against all conceivable odds of its state of disrepair. A tiny display of a Siren's power, but it was enough to make Rhys' eyes glitter with awe.

"Can you maybe do something with the mask to show Jack I'm not lying? I-I know you'd rather he didn't know you're alive but...but he does. And he's gonna kill me if I don't show him something."

The digistruct rattled and Rhys quickly scooped it up out of fear it would fall off his thigh and crash onto the ground below. The light spluttered out blue, then purple, then shifted to a whitish-silver hue. It directed to Rhys' free hand and began to digitally sew an object into existence. In no time at all, Rhys was the proud and brief owner of Handsome Jack's new mask.

"Here," he called down to Jack, throwing the mask down. "It's from Angel. Take a look yourself if you don't believe me."

Jack caught the mask, turning it over in his hands. Rhys sort of regretted opting for the cool-guy delivery and not giving himself enough time to inspect the mask himself. What could Angel have done to communicate to her father that Rhys was to be trusted? Or at least, not killed?

Something caught Jack's attention on the inside of the mask. His expression shifted to one of disbelief, then shock, and he snapped his head up to look at Rhys.

"That's not...possible?" Jack muttered. He then shook his head, and turned away to begin fixing the mask to his face. He pulled out the ECHO eye, no longer having any need for it given the mask's capabilities, and clipped the mask securely over his face. He then turned to look up at Rhys, and Rhys noted the man seemed about as stable as Jack had ever been.

"Can I come down now?"

"Yeah. Er...s-ssssssssooorrrr..." Jack looked as though he might vomit over the word he was struggling with. He pulled a face, then looked away, nose turned up in the air. "Whatever, my bad, got a little pissed off. You told me you knew where she was. Guess that...counts for something. Sure, throat's yours, come on down Prince Charming. Want your knock-off Jack back or can I crush it?"

He held out the ECHO eye, dangling it by a wire between his index finger and thumb. Rhys looked at the innocent-looking device, thinking about the furious and violent AI trapped inside it. AI Jack had, at one point, been some sort of ally and some kind of friend. Yet with each passing moment, the program grew more and more resentful of Rhys. The distance between them, physically and metaphorically, had never been greater.

_He wants to be just like Handsome Jack, _Rhys thought bitterly to himself. _He hates him, but he wants to be him. Guess I get that…_

"No, er...I'll keep hold of him—it. The ECHO eye," Rhys corrected himself too many times as he climbed down from his safety-perch. He still felt uneasy being too close to Jack, but he reached out and took the ECHO eye from the man all the same. With his mask back on, Jack was starting to look more and more like the hero Rhys had emblazoned on his office walls and craned his neck too many times to catch a glimpse of in the corridors of Helios.

He was starting to realise why Angel had called the mask the perfect bargaining chip. With it now in place, Jack seemed more sure of himself than ever, like walking onto a stage to play a role that now made sense to him.

_Even Jack just wants to be Handsome Jack_.

It had never occurred to Rhys before that the man himself was aspiring to the same hero everyone else at Hyperion was trying to mimic. That it was all a careful construct. He wondered when and why Jack had created this persona, and where it ended and the real Jack began. If there was even a clear cut any more.

Was this what Angel meant by his trip to Elpis?

"Angel...was connected to all of the Hyperion network most of her life. Even when she was...when she _died_. She was always connected to it. I shoulda known she'd have saved herself through it," Jack mused aloud, looking down at the digistruct in Rhys' hand. "When you said you knew where she was...you knew she'd uploaded her consciousness?"

"Y-yeah, she's er...a little stuck at the moment. WiFi signals are apparently rubbish in Vaults," Rhys half-laughed, rubbing the back of his head. "So, we gotta find a way out of here so she can be free...free-er. Must be kinda cramped in there compared to the Hyperion network."

Jack frowned.

"Yeah..."

It was the sort of "yeah" that hid a hundred questions, but Rhys wasn't going to push his luck to ask any of them. Even if he had wanted to, Jack snapped too quickly back to a broad smile and endless enthusiasm. He clapped Rhys on the shoulder with enough force to nearly send the man face-first into the dirt.

"**_Offft_**!"

"_Thaaat's_ the spirit! Right, you and me, Rhysie! We're getting out of this Vault and we're saving my daughter! But I got no idea where the door is, so I hope you got your walking boots on, pumpkin!"


	7. Chapter 7

The inside of the Vault of the Traveler, Rhys soon learned, was not reflective of all Vaults. Its tiny, single chamber was certainly not a common blueprint shared throughout the hive-like system, as the Vault the two men had trekked through over the last few days proved.

Once more, they had been forced to find somewhere to take shelter for the night. Once more, it had been at Rhys' behest.

"I thought...you hated….walking?" Rhys managed to wheeze out as he plodded along after Jack. Jack turned just enough for Rhys to see his eyebrow arch.

"What? Where'd you read that?"

"I err...heard it. The AI you doesn't much like walking. Or running."

"Guess he gets the option to fly. Credit to him, I'd definitely choose flying over any other method of movement. Who wouldn't?" Jack mused aloud, stopping them suddenly in their tracks. "Alright, this'll do for the night. Y'know, you're lucky — I can count on one hand the amount of Hyperion staff who lived to say they've shared a room with Handsome Jack."

He raised his hand, and one by one, curled his fingers down from five, four, three, two, one...and then that went down too. Rhys gulped, eyes flicking between Jack's finished countdown and Jack himself.

"What errr...what happened to them all?"

"You killed 'em, pumpkin! Right? When you smashed Helios into the ground!"

Jack was smiling, teeth bared, and his voice was jovial enough. But Rhys couldn't help but feel less reassured for it.

"W-well no...I mean, not _everyone _died and you, well, digital-you...kinda had a hand in it too..."

"Relax, Rhysie. If I wanted to kill you for destroying my entire life's work and daily struggles, I woulda done it by now. I mean, you're not exactly bringin' anything essential to this Vault trip of ours," Jack chuckled, shaking his head and looking at Rhys with an air of unrestrained pity. "Lucky for you, you got Angel-armour."

Rhys gave a nervous laugh, then stopped himself. Jack's entire utterance replayed in his head.

"Hey wait, I'm not a Hyperion employee any more!" He protested much too late.

"Look, it's not my fault if you don't read the contracts, Mister Atlas CEO," Jack shrugged, walking away from Rhys and towards their rather rustic accommodation for the night. Rhys turned to scowl after him, but it wasn't long before he was distracted by what Jack was walking towards.

The tree was impossibly huge, even within this alien jungle of tangled foliage and monstrous flora. At its base the wood split apart, revealing a hollow within that was almost as big as Rhys' first apartment on Helios.

He called it his apartment. He was pretty sure it was a renovated equipment storage room. But it had been cosy enough.

He followed after Jack, feeling the muscles in his legs tighten and ache in protest. As he stepped into the gloom of the tree's hollow, the space in front of him became cast in the dull yellow light of his ECHO eye.

"Don't sleep by the door, Prince Charming. You know I'm a heavy sleeper and I will _not _be wakin' up to save you if you get dragged out by a passing alien Vault bear looking for a snackie-snack at 2am," Jack warned him, shrugging his jacket off and lying it on the ground furthest from the hollow's entrance. He flopped down on the floor then, looking perfectly at ease as he mused aloud: "Is it bothering you that we haven't come across the Vault Guardian yet? Like, they usually show up pretty quick. Kinda their thing, stopping people in Vaults. Or maybe it's been stalking us this whole time? Eh whatever, goodnight!"

With that, Jack rolled over, leaving a suitably terrified Rhys to shuffle away from the entryway, cold sweat pouring down his neck.

* * *

Throughout the night, Rhys awoke in stops and starts. He hadn't slept a full night since they'd arrived in this Vault, and Jack's comment about the suspicious absence of a Vault Guardian had only served to keep the man from settling down. Huffing to himself and rolling over, Rhys let his ECHO eye flicker on so he could look around their strange abode. Jack hadn't moved much, save to roll onto his back sometime in the night and leave one arm splayed out as he slept soundly, lips parted as he snored gently.

_How dare he_, Rhys thought wretchedly. _Also, how can he? We could die here! At any time! _

Was this why Jack was considered a hero? He certainly didn't seem scared of much. But after learning about Jack's condition from Angel in the days prior, Rhys couldn't help but wonder if it was bravery or recklessness that drove the other man's apparent lack of fear.

Sighing, Rhys rolled over to try and get some sleep...and came face-to-face with a creature sharing his rolled-up jacket pillow.

Rhys blinked. And he could have sworn the spider next to his face blinked back. With all eight eyes.

The scream that emitted from Rhys' mouth was not only embarrassing, but it turned out to be one of the few things able to wake a sleeping Handsome Jack. The younger man jolted up in a mad scramble of limbs as Jack started awake slightly less energetically. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, Jack began to scowl in the split-second he had before Rhys barrelled into him, half-clinging to him, half-hiding behind him.

"You're only not dead because I'm half-asleep still," Jack growled, trying to peel Rhys' arms from his torso. It was impossible. Rhys' death-like grip kept the lanky man firmly attached to Jack. "Jeez...would you...let go...right _fine_, what is it?!"

"S-s-s-s-s!"

"Rhys. Next stutter better be a damn good reason why you robbed me of my beauty sleep!"

"S-s-s-sp-sp-s-spider!"

Silence settled between the two of them.

"...A spider."

"Mmm-hmm!"

"A spider?"

"R-r-right on my pillow."

"You woke me up 'cause of a spider?"

"I-i-i-it's huge!"

"You've been to Pandora, first-hand experience of all its horrors?"

"...yeah…?"

"Skin Pizza parties, chopped up limbs, bandits, all that jazz?"

"...uh-huh..."

"But naw, it's a spider that puts the shits up you, is that about the right of it?"

"...Jack, it was right in my face..."

Rhys watched as the man rolled his eyes so far that only the whites could be seen for a moment. Then, he shrugged Rhys off of him, letting him land against his jacket on the floor, and stood up.

"You're _so_ lucky you're the only person who can see Angel, dickwad. Soon as I've rescued her, I'm launching a full Hyperion assault on Atlas. Friendly heads-up on that, 'cause I'm sporting."

Jack stomped over to where Rhys had been sleeping and scooped up the jacket he'd rolled up as a makeshift pillow. He shook it out a few times, and to Rhys' horror, the spider fell out of it to the floor.

"_Ah! _There, there!" He yelped, drawing his legs up and away from the running spider, curling up into a defensive ball. Jack's boot slammed down on the poor creature, stopping it in its tracks.

"There, done, oh my god, go back to sleep," Jack complained in a single breath, tossing Rhys' jacket to the floor and trudging back to where he had been sleeping. Rhys didn't move.

"...What if there's more?"

"I mean, probably, it's a fricking jungle. Prolly spiders and centipedes and all sorts."

Jack looked down at the cowering, trembling man who was slowly starting to assimilate Jack's bed-jacket around himself. "Wait, nah-ah, nope, not sleeping in my bed, get over to your side of the tree."

"B-b-b-but!"

"Look, a spider's probably not gonna kill ya! Unless it's venomous and bites you. Me? I _will _kill you if you don't let me go back to sleep _right now Rhysie._"

"Angel-armour," Rhys muttered, peering up at Jack and drawing the man's jacket around him as if that were the armour. Jack's face contorted in irritation.

"You slimy little piece of shit...gimme that!" Jack reached down and snatched his coat off of Rhys with such force that he dragged the other man forward a little. He rifled in the inner pocket for a moment, then drew out a box of cigarettes. Letting the coat fall to the ground, Jack tapped the box until a cigarette peeked out of the torn corner, and put it in his mouth.

"They were in your coat the whole time you were...sorta-dead?" Rhys asked, looking at the discarded garment and wondering what else Jack had hidden in the pockets.

"Bandits looted my fucking mask, but not my expensive smokes. Morons, who's surprised? Not me," Jack muttered, pulling a lighter out of his pocket and sparking up. He took a long drag of the cigarette, exhaling the smoke from his nostrils. "Alright. Science lesson, Atl-asshole. You can repel animals with stuff. Cats don't like citrus, you know that? Salt keeps slugs away. Spiders? They hate ashes. Carbon or something keeps them away."

Jack tapped the end of the cigarette, letting the ashes fall to the ground. Then, he walked over to where Rhys had been sleeping and walked in a wide circle around it, occasionally tapping his cigarette to let the ashes fall. After about fifteen minutes, Jack finished his cigarette and flicked the end out of the entryway. Blowing the last of the smoke from his lungs upwards and away from them both, he walked back to his designated sleeping spot. "There. Now go the fuck to sleep."

Rhys eyeballed the area he'd been chased from so brutally by the spider.

"...Ashes keep spiders away?" He asked, one eyebrow raising as he scrutinised the floor.

"Rhys. My patience. Ran out. Twenty minutes ago."

"Ashes totally keep spiders away!" Rhys smiled nervously, getting up and scooting back over to his makeshift bed. "Th-thanks. Er, Jack...for, y'know...getting rid of the spider for me..."

Rhys received no reply save for Jack dropping down to sleep again with a grumbled response that couldn't quite be called a word.

* * *

Sunlight poured into the tree hollow as the dawn broke. Its rays crept through the entrance way, beaming down across Rhys' face. His eyes scrunched up a little, before he slowly opened them and blinked against the morning sun.

There, cast against the rising sun, sitting on his pillow…

...was a spider.

"_GAH! JACK!"_ Rhys screamed, and the sound was accompanied by a loud yawn. Jack stretched, arched his back, then got to his feet, patting down his bedhair half-heartedly.

"G'morning, Charming."

"JACK! THERE'S A SPIDER! AGAIN!"

"Probably..."

Rhys gawked at him.

_Trust Jack. Right. Fool me once, shame on you...fool me...several times…_

"You_ said_—the cigarette ash—what about the—?"

The other man was pulling his jacket on already, paying very little attention to the flustering of Rhys' indignation at having been lied to.

"Yeah, yeah, made it up. Why's it matter?"

"You _lied!_"

"And? Made you feel safe, right?"

"Y-yeah but—"

"So you got a night's sleep and you'll be able to keep travelling today without bitching about being tired the whole time. Maybe we'll even get out of this damn Vault."

"I—"

Jack readjusted the cloaking device on his lapel, then finally looked up at Rhys with a smirk.

"C'mon, Rhys-cakes. That horse is_ waaaay_ too high for you."

* * *

They had been walking for hours, with only idle chat to break up the silence. Most of it was Jack confirming a few things his AI self had reported to him; Rhys had been quite surprised how honest the artificial intelligence had been in that regard. The rest of the time Jack had spent quite focused on avoiding any lethal risks or dangers of the Vault.

Rhys, meanwhile, had been quite fixated with the floor.

Not that he wasn't helping. He just wasn't sure if Jack could see the big, glowing footprints outlined in the ground. Rhys had made a conscious effort to walk over them when he saw them, but he couldn't feel any change in the ground's level when he did, in spite of what he could see looking like it should have indented the ground.

_The ECHO eye was disabled the whole time I thought I was scanning things...how am I seeing this stuff? _

"Errr...Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't think we should keep going this way."

"Why's that?"

Rhys looked up from his examination of the floor.

"Really big footprints. I don't wanna fight anything with bigger footprints than me."

"Okay, first of all, you wouldn't fight a spider with eight feets smaller than yours—"

"..._Feets?"_

"Second of all, what footprints?"

Of course, the ground shook beneath them then. Of course, whatever had made those footprints made itself known now, charging through the jungle and collapsing trees like so many dominoes in a row. Of course, it was huge, it was angry, and it was the Vault Guardian.

Rhys narrowed his eyes at Jack.

"You just had to ask."

"What can I say? Lady Fate is tempted by me, can you blame her?"

With that, the pair set off at a run, though much to his chagrin, only Rhys was shrieking. The creature charging behind them was a huge, stretched humanoid covered in shaggy white hair. Its unnaturally long arms swung through the trees, tearing them down without thought, its wide, wild eyes pinned on the fleeing pair.

"Rhys! Over here!" Jack called out, running off to the right and sliding down a ridge and out of sight. Rhys yelped and sharply turned to follow suit, stumbling down the sudden decline.

"What do we do?!"

"I mean, I'd normally be shooting it, but those limp-dick Vault Hunters looted my fucking not-corpse."

An idea struck Rhys a moment slower than it clearly struck Angel in the digistruct device fastened to Jack's leg. He could see the light flicker to life, first blue, then brightening to white.

"Jack! Digistruct!" Rhys pointed to Jack's leg, then cowered as the Vault Guardian lunged overhead, clearing the ridge by a leap and a bound and landing far in front of the pair. Jack looked down and gave a yelp of triumph.

"Alright! Gimme some firepower, Angel!"

Rhys could almost hear Angel rolling her eyes, but a gun constructed in Jack's hands all the same. Hyperion-issued, of course. As soon as it did, a gun appeared in Rhys' hand too.

"Woah, errr, I don't, I don't know how to use this!"

"Point and click, dum-dum," Jack smirked, already raining bullets into the Vault Guardian. The creature howled and screamed, recoiling away but looking more pissed off than pained. Meanwhile, Rhys fumbled with the gun, hands shaking. There was no way he could do this. It had more buttons than his fricking computer. He wasn't like Jack. He didn't have a lifetime's experience wielding these damn things.

_Yes, I do. _

The thought pierced clear through his panic-hazed mind as he thought about the ace in his pocket. Rhys scrambled to pull the ECHO eye out, looking at the blue lens for a brief second.

_...Am I really gonna plug this psycho into a weapon? _

The Vault Monster's roar, coupled with Jack's own roar of "_Any time you're ready, Rhysie, no hurry, you take your sweet time!" _spurred him to action. He quickly wired the cybernetic into the gun's on-board computer. Almost at once, the gun began to vibrate, the lights flooding from Hyperion yellow to cyan blue.

"Oh. Oh you did _not_ load me into a fricking _gun,_" Jack's voice crackled out of the poor-quality speakers Rhys didn't realise the gun had. Nor could he figure out _why_ it would be built with them.

"Just for now, look, please, help me or I'm gonna die here," Rhys pleaded with the gun in his hands.

"Good," it sulked.

"Jack_ please_. If I die here, you're stuck."

"Eff ey _da__aaaiiiii__y_ yoor _staaak_!"

"Seriously?! You're mocking me right now, _right now_?!" Rhys hissed at the gun, diving to avoid the Vault Guardian's strike.

"Hey, fuck you! Do you know how cramped it is in here?! I don't even have fricking legs anymore! You took my damn legs, Rhys!"

The gun rattled and began spewing bullets as AI Jack ranted, and Rhys had to hold it at arm's length to avoid being shot.

"I'll get you out if you start _helping out_!" Rhys snapped.

"_Eyll geet yoo owwt eff yoo staaat_—_"_

Rhys didn't wait to hear the rest of AI Jack's mockery. Instead, he took one look at the still-firing gun...and threw it at the Vault Monster. The firearm was still exploding with bullets as he did, and to Rhys' surprise, it bounced and sprayed more bullets over and over. He could see the real Jack skid behind a rock for cover, peeking out to glower at Rhys.

"_How _did you manage to fuck up _point and click?!"_

Unfortunately for real Jack, Rhys was pretty sick of hearing criticism in _any _Jack's voice.

"You know what? I don't have to put up with this! You know why I don't know how to use a Hyperion weapon? 'Cause Hyperion's staff training process _sucks_. There! I said it! Train your staff better!"

"Come over here and talk shit about my company to my face, Atl-ass, and we'll see whose name is on that dotted line that _owns your whole stupid corporation!_"

"No, _you _get over here and tell _yourself _to stop being such a bratty gun and—"

Rhys' bold rebuke was cut short by what he thought was the Vault Guardian getting its second wind. He wasn't completely wrong either.

It just wasn't _that _Vault Guardian.

As the ground shook and brought Rhys crashing to the floor, he, Jack, and the white-furred Vault Monster's attentions were all demanded by the gigantic newcomer. The draconian creature that stomped into view looked like it had been wrought from lava. From Jack's whooping laugh, Rhys figured out immediately what it was.

"..._The Warrior,_" he breathed, eyes widening as he gazed upon the furious being.

In one fell swoop, the Warrior grabbed the Vault Guardian by its throat, hoisting it up with ease. The creature struggled and writhed, and Rhys bolted to the same rock cover as Jack. The man was beaming up at the creature, eyes glittering as though he were looking upon his own idol.

"See! I told you it was still alive! Vault Guardians don't die so easily, pumpkin! And this bad boy is under _my _command! Yo, Warrior! Heeeey, just KO the big fuzzball for me, ok?"

The Warrior gave a thunderous howl, tightening its grip on the Vault Guardian's neck. Rhys winced as he heard the Guardians bones squeaking and creaking under the pressure, before they finally shattered within the Warrior's hand.

The effect was immediate. As soon as the Vault Guardian's form fell limp in the Warrior's stranglehold, the Vault around them began to wane. The leaves that wove a plush jungle around them drained of colour, drying and crumbling to dust and grey. The ground beneath Rhys' feet turned from emerald to scorched earth. As the Vault Guardian died, the energy of the Vault fled with it.

"Jack! If the Guardian's dead, the door outside is too!"

"I know, I know! I told it not to kill it! God dammit, you just can't get the staff these days!"

With that, the Warrior let the dead Vault Guardian fall from its hands. It didn't even glance at Rhys and Jack before it began to leave once again, tearing through the now-depleted jungle scape to continue its rampage. Jack let out a frustrated sigh.

"Are you _kidding _me? Uuuurgh! This thing is like every other Hyperion goon...y'give 'em one order and they either fuck it up or stick to it and _nothing else_."

"Wh-what did you originally ask it to do?" Rhys already hated the question before he had asked it. Jack shrugged, looking slightly ruffled for once.

"Well, y'know, heat of the battle, kinda had to keep it short and sweet."

"Jack?"

"...I mean, I said _kill_, but I meant the Vault Hunters. Thought the Warrior would have an understanding of context and subtext and stuff?"

Rhys felt his flesh turn cold as he slowly turned to watch after the path the Warrior had torn through the Vault.

"Oh my god...it's doing exactly as you told it to do. It's killing."


	8. Chapter 8

With the Vault Guardian dead, the Vault it had protected decayed swiftly after. The trees slumped down, the canopy of leaves turned to dust and scattered in the wind. The grass beneath Rhys' feet crumbled down into sand and the air itself grew colder.

Jack, for what it was worth, had the manners enough to look marginally upset about the situation he'd indirectly caused.

"Okay, you know what? Nah. I'm not taking the fall for this one!" The man protested, holding a hand out as though he physically rejected Rhys' words. "I was in a one-v-_four _fight, I didn't exactly have time to check with the Warrior whether or not it had a basic understanding of semantics! I was practically, no, _literally _holding my guts in and bleeding out all over the fricking floor! I wasn't gonna iron out the tiny little details of who exactly I wanted it to kill."

Rhys' hand came up to his forehead, for a sense of stability if nothing else. Of course. Jack wasn't upset at the Warrior running rampant through the Vaults executing his _kill _command still, long after Jack's sort-of-death. No. _He _was upset that he was getting blamed for it.

"Alright, alright...I guess it's not really important _who _caused this...just how we're gonna stop that thing," Rhys said. He decided against trying to get Jack to see any other angle on this other than his own, from up there on his self-made pedestal.

_Not entirely self-made. People like me built that thing up for him too…_he thought to himself.

"We don't need to stop it, pumpkin, we just need to outrun it," Jack pointed out, hands on his hips. "Vault Guardians don't protect a Vault's power, they _are _the power, right? No power, doors don't open. _Buuuut_, lucky us, the Warrior will bust open a wall to get to another Vault linked to this one. We follow the big guy through, then leg it to the door before ol' Lava Features snuffs out that Vault's Guardian!"

Rhys' jaw dropped a little. _That _was his big heroic plan?

"What if the Warrior runs out of Guardians?"

"...Well, I guess it'll bust outta the Vaults and take the party to Pandora."

"And that doesn't worry you at all?"

Jack pursed his lips, tilted his head, and arched his eyebrows at Rhys, disbelieving. Rhys shook his head and waved a hand to dismiss his own question. "Yeah, okay, dumb question."

"I'm nothing if not honest, Prince Charming. C'mon, let's get going. If we hurry, we might be able to sneak out of the next Vault."

As the Hyperion CEO swaggered away, Rhys could only plod along behind him, feeling his whole heart ache with disappointment. Sure, there were differences between AI Jack and the real Jack. Sure, they were a hell of a lot more separate than Rhys had considered before.

But god..._god _he'd held some tiny little hope that the real Jack might have been slightly less of a self-centred douchebag than AI Jack was. That maybe Nakayama hadn't been _that _accurate in recreating the man's manner.

He stooped down to pick up the gun he'd loaded the AI into as the pair walked by the still form of the Vault Guardian.

"Y'know, lying there? Really made me think...I took walking for granted," AI Jack's voice crackled from the small speakers on the gun, speakers Rhys still couldn't understand why they had been built in.

"Eh, least you can still fly? Kinda. You sort of...bounce," Rhys offered, holstering the gun on his back.

"Aw, goddammit...Rhys, honey, think about this. I'm a gun now. This gun has a scope. Scope's my eyes now. And, like this, the scope is pointing down _riiiiight_ at your ass. Also, pull your pants up a little, your asscrack is showing."

Rhys jumped, yelled, knocked the AI Jack gun from his back and yanked the belt of his pants up all in one fluid catastrophe of limbs. He could hear the gun's maniacal cackling as it bounced across the floor, and saw Jack pause and look back, one eyebrow raised. Rhys was silently surprised the man had actually stopped for him.

"You good?"

"Y-yeah! Yeah, just er...heh...thought I saw it...move," Rhys replied, running a hand through his hair and pointing at the Vault Guardian's carcass. He cleared his throat, picked up the still-laughing AI-infused Jackhammer, and skulked after Jack. Off to Rhys' left, unseen by Jack, Angel's form flickered into view, hovering at the same side her father had the digistruct device equipped.

"I could de-digistruct the gun for you, if you like?" She offered, nodding at the AI Jack-gun.

Rhys looked up at Angel, then to Jack. He hadn't noticed at all, of course, but Rhys didn't want to upset Angel by making him aware. He looked back at her. She took the hint. "Oh...can't talk. Got it. Erm...tap the gun once if you wanna keep it, tap it twice if you want me to get rid of it."

Rhys drummed his finger on the Jackhammer once. He lifted his finger again, but hesitated.

_If the gun goes...does he go to? _

Rhys let his finger curl in, deciding to keep the gun for now. Angel looked surprised, but she nodded in understanding.

They were coming to the end of the path torn by the Warrior and, sure enough, another smashed-open wall acting as a window to the next connected Vault came into view.

"Jack's right about the Vaults — the Guardians keep them active. But you're right too...once it runs out of Guardians, the Warrior might keep going through to Pandora. We should find a way to get it back to its own Vault. It will be harder, but it's the right thing to do," Angel said, floating over to Rhys' side. "Look, it's not that Jack won't admit he's wrong. It's worse than that: he genuinely doesn't _think _he's wrong. Ever. You can't convince him his current plan isn't right. You have to lead him to _want_ to change his mind on his own."

_How. The hell. Do I do. That?! _Rhys thought, staring at Angel will more than a little panic and desperation.

_Wait. _

The answer was literally before his eyes.

"We'd better get a move on. Don't wanna get locked in that Vault too," Rhys said, falling in step beside Jack. The other man glanced sideward at Rhys, looked him up and down, but didn't say anything. "So, what's the plan with Angel?"

A muscle in Jack's jaw twitched.

"If you don't have a plan to _give _me, then you don't need to be in on that little mission, pumpkin. You just need to tell me where she is, and I'll figure out how to bring her back."

"Well, yeah, I mean, cloning bodies, downloading consciousnesses, kinda not my expertise...but if you do all that and Angel gets a new body, gets to come back, she's just gonna be another person on Pandora for the Warrior to kill."

"The Warrior ain't gonna get near her. Not on my watch."

"Oh yeah? 'Cause you said the same about the Vault Hunters, and you couldn't stop them getting close enough to help her kill herse—"

The rest of Rhys' sentence was smashed from his lips by Jack's fist. It would have sent the man toppling to the ground had Jack not grabbed Rhys by the collar with his other hand and yanked him up to face him.

_Pushed the wrong button, pushed the wrong button! _Rhys' mind screamed, his mouth filling with the taste of iron. Jack's upper lip was curled up in a snarl, both eyes ablaze with utter indignation at Rhys' accurate observation of his track record.

"Maybe, _maybe_, I should just fricking leave you here to die, _Rhys,_" Jack hissed. "Or maybe — maybe you're sorta _right!_"

Rhys was so busy scrambling for something to say to calm Jack down that he almost missed what the other man had said.

"I'm...I'm what?"

"You think I don't know?" Jack pulled Rhys by the collar a little closer, looking angrier despite speaking in something of an agreement with Rhys. "That I shoulda killed those damn Vault Hunters a hundred times over before they got close to my Angel? That I _could _have blown them off the face of Pandora way before then? But I didn't. I let 'em run around, I let 'em build shit up so I could _burn it down_, I did all that instead of just fricking _killing them. _'Cause I thought Angel was safe. So...maybe you're right. Maybe I shouldn't let the Warrior run around. Maybe I should kill it before it can kill what I love."

"Wait, that's not quite what I—_ooph!_"

Jack let Rhys go, and he landed on the ground in a heap, the air knocked from his lungs. Jack was already marching off, gun in hand, leaving Rhys in the dust. Rhys scrambled to his feet. "Y-you can't seriously...you want to one-v-one the freaking _Warrior?_"

It wasn't much better than letting the Warrior run rampant. Namely because it would stomp over Jack and continue on its merry way.

Rhys couldn't catch up to Jack before he reached the broken wall to the next Vault. But he didn't have to. Another figure stood in Jack's way. Rhys stayed quiet, wondering if this was another thing he could see that Jack could not. But when the other man stopped, Rhys realised whoever...or whatever...this was, they were physically here.

A metallic creature (or, indeed, an armoured being, Rhys couldn't tell) adorned with red and black wing-like protrusions blocked Jack's path. As Jack drew closer, the creature held out a hand, wagging its finger at him.

"_Ah-ah-ah_...you're becoming such a struggle to keep alive, Jack," the being said. After a moment, recognition flitted over Jack's features.

"Wow. Seriously? What even is your game here, alien? You show up to stop me shooting Zarpedon, skip a few years, then show up to stop me killing the Warrior? It's not even problematic at this point, it's just kinda weird."

"No...I stopped you running into a hail of bullets. And I'm stopping your running into the jaws of the Warrior. You need to be alive, Jack," the creature purred, stepping forward a single pace. "And the Warrior needs returning to its Vault. Left like this...the universe will not last long."

Rhys slowly walked up behind Jack, peering out at the alien creature.

"Sorry, er...who-who are you? In all this? 'Cause I'm sorta losing track..."

"Your tongue would have difficulty with my name," the being chuckled. "But I have heard his kind call me the Watcher. Shall we agree on that?"

"Yeah, 'cause god knows you do screw-all else except mildly annoy me sometimes," Jack complained, though he made no move to push past the creature. Whatever their history, it seemed to be enough to keep Jack from attacking. Which made Rhys uncomfortable.

"Listen to me," the Watcher said. "The Vaults are connected, yes, all around Pandora...because they serve as a cage. Pandora itself is a cage. If the Warrior continues on its rampage and more Vaults fall...the cage will weaken. And what will emerge...will kill everything," the Watcher regaled the tale with little fear in its voice.

"Sooo...y'keeping me alive to be the hero, right? To save the universe from this?" Jack asked, and Rhys rolled his eyes so hard he was surprised Jack didn't hear. How did he get himself into _every _conversation?

"You are...needed," the Watcher admitted. "To replace what you destroyed."

* * *

With Jack's ego satisfied, the pair agreed to lure the Warrior back into its Vault. Doing so would activate the Warrior's Vault once more, leading to their freedom, the Watcher had assured them before disappearing. Rhys couldn't say he fully trusted the strange being, but it seemed a little more sane than Jack at least. If it offered a plan that wouldn't end with Pandora being turned into more of a bloodbath than it already was, then he was happy to go with it.

However, the hold-up caused by the Watcher had given the Warrior enough time to blaze its way through the next Vault. The pair set off through the path the creature had melted through the snowy-environment of this next Vault, but before long, the snow ceased to fall. The skies darkened and the air grew fridgid and painfully cold.

"Dammit..." Rhys muttered, looking up at the sky and huddling his arms tighter around himself. "There goes the Guardian..."

"Doesn't matter," Jack said, shrugging his jacket off and chucking it over Rhys. The garment smacked the man in the face, and it took a great deal of effort for Rhys to untangle it from himself. "We're not tryin' to get out now. We just need to catch up and piss off the Warrior, get it to chase us...and then run like hell back through this Vault, the one before _aaaaand_ back to the Warrior's. You got long legs, you'll be ace at it."

Rhys managed to pull Jack's jacket around his shoulders, and set about trying to smooth out his now-tussled hair.

"You err...you not cold?"

"Freezing. Seriously, this mask is like a plate of ice right now. Probably got my boogers frozen to the inside."

"Gross, thanks."

"Hey, I gave you my jacket, didn't I?"

Rhys tangled his fingers into the sides of the coat and pulled it a little closer.

"Yeah. Actually, why'd you do that?"

"Well, if we're sticking on this quest a little longer, figured...y'know...easier to be civil. Less punchy. _Aaaaand _for you not to die of frostbite."

"Was that an apology for punching me in the face? 'Cause that almost sounded like an apology for punching me in the face."

Jack glanced back at him.

"Absolutely not, dickcheese."

Jack turned away then and brought one hand up to slowly unfasten his mask. Rhys dared not move. The other man pulled the mask from his face and began muttering about it being uncomfortable, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. Rhys' nose crinkled as he realised what Jack was doing.

"You...don't have to wear that here. Y'know, if it's causing...ice-boogers...and stuff..." Rhys mumbled, pointing to the mask. Jack looked back for a brief second, perhaps forgetting himself, before he sharply looked away again. But not before Rhys saw it — the skin around the branded scar on Jack's face was peeling out further than before. The skin beneath was as blue as the scar itself. Rhys' lips parted to ask, but he decided against it. Perhaps Jack didn't even know it himself yet.

"And get frostbite on my nose again? No thank _youuu_."

He refastened his mask to his face, and set off once again through the snow. Rhys shook his head to himself, recalling what AI Jack had told him about the mushrooms he'd snorted.

_Guess that was true after all…_

"It is sort of strange...I always thought that it was just the relic that turned his scar blue," Angel's voice sounded before she appeared, floating over Rhys' left shoulder and looking towards Jack's retreating back.

"Relic?" Rhys whispered.

"Oh, he got the scar during one of his Vault escapades," Angel explained, following after Rhys as he himself followed Jack through the snow. "Something happened with an Eridian relic and it burned his face like that. That scar is infused with eridium...like a Siren's tattoos. I've often wondered if the first Sirens were branded like that too, to forge our connection to eridium — our tattoos are really more like scars. But I suppose you know that already."

She gestured to Rhys' left arm, causing Rhys to look at it quizzically.

"You're not the first to say I musta based the design off Sirens. But honestly? I didn't design it at all," Rhys spoke quietly, eyeing Jack to make sure the other man couldn't hear him. "Kinda embarrassing actually. I woke up the day after my 21st birthday and had this huge tattoo on my arm. I mean I...I got pretty drunk on my 21st so I figure I got _really_ drunk and got a massive tattoo. Really not something I would do sober. The one on my neck hurt like hell and it's pretty small."

"Your 21st?" Angel trailed off in thought, then asked suddenly: "Rhys, how old are you?"

"27, why?"

"So...you woke up six years ago with that tattoo on your arm?"

"Yeah? What's up?"

"I _knew _it! Rhys, six years ago...was 2864. The year the Vault Hunters fought the Destroyer. The year a Siren, Commandant Steele, died."


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: I got a little carried away and this chapter is quite a bit longer than usual as a result. Oops. Part of the interaction here is based on an idea I had in my one-shot, _A Crisis of Coding_. So if it sounds familiar, that's why! **

* * *

If Jack had announced a few minutes earlier that they had enough wiggle room to rest for a few hours before continuing their pursuit of the Warrior, Rhys would have counted his blessings. The battle with the last Vault's Guardian had left more than a dent on the man's energy reserves — his limbs ached, his head pounded, and he was running on little more than the fumes of his adrenaline from said fight.

But even as the older man found them shelter from the snow, Rhys knew he would not be able to sleep. His mind was going a mile a minute, and not only with the usual issues of Jack, his AI counterpart, and Angel. Those problems had been blasted away like leaves in the wind at the revelation Jack's daughter had brought to Rhys' attention.

A Siren had died the same year Rhys' arm tattoo had shown up. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe he was right to assume he'd just gotten blind-drunk on his 21st and agreed to a stupidly over-large tattoo that absolutely didn't match his first ink on his neck at all.

Or maybe...maybe it was the mark of a Siren. Maybe it explained the strange visions he kept having, and how he had been able to "see" beyond the norm even after his ECHO eye had been unknowingly deactivated.

"Hey, where you going?" He heard Jack call before he'd even realised himself that he was walking out of the small cave they'd settled into as shelter.

"I err...I just need to get some air," Rhys offered limply.

"Maybe you missed it, but it's _freezing _out there."

"It's fine, I know, just...I'll be back in a sec. Smoke is making me feel weird," Rhys pointed back at the fire Jack had started to warm the shelter, then scurried out before the man could object that his perfect campfire was _not _smokey.

He'd been right about the temperature outside though. The freezing air peeled the warming hug of their shelter away as soon as Rhys stepped out, and the man huddled his arms around his torso to try and keep it away. Shuffling through the snow, Rhys found a small outcrop that gave a spectacular view across the Vault. There, he paused for a moment, eyeing the snow, before disregarding all concerns of getting his pants wet and sitting down. He hugged his knees to his chest and settled his chin down on top.

"Weird thing," a voice chirped from his left. Rhys didn't even need to look to know AI Jack was floating there. "Being a gun? Totally not as exciting as you'd think. Especially when no one's pullin' your trigger."

Rhys rolled his eyes, but didn't respond. AI Jack...well, _either _Jack...slammed a lot of energy into everyone around him with just his manner and presence. It demanded a certain level of energy to respond in kind, and Rhys just did not have that in his tank right now.

A blur of blue appeared in the corner of his eye as AI Jack peered across.

"Stewing on some regrets there, cupcake? I don't blame you. You have made a _tidal wave _of bad choices up till now. And, honestly, after the whole betrayal thing, I'd totally leave you to dwell on that? Buuuut, I'm stuck in a gun and can't project a hologram of myself to go remind my meatsack twin that he's the lesser Jack. So you'll have to do as company."

Again, Rhys didn't reply, though his brow creased a little at the mention of _his _apparent betrayal on Helios. They hadn't really had chance to address their cataclysmic fallout on the Hyperion base, and the event had poisoned their interactions ever since Rhys had allowed the AI to return. Slowly, that bitterness had built up, held back only by a shared desire to survive. But now, in this ceasefire, it demanded to be addressed.

"_My _betrayal? Yeah, you know what, let's talk about that, Jack," Rhys finally spoke up, his foul mood finding a way to vent out. "'Cause if I remember rightly, _you _tried to trap me in a conscious _hell _while you took control of my entire body with a metal skeleton!"

At this, the AI scowled.

"And _you _tried to kill me! You dropped the entire space station onto Pandora! I nearly _died_!"

"_After_, Jack! _After_ you tried to kill _me!_"

"You wouldn'ta _died_, I already told you. We'd be sharing!"

"It's not sharing if you're in control, Jack! You were going to trap me in my own body and use me as a puppet! You're insane, so yeah, I stopped you! And you know what? I nearly crushed the ECHO eye. Yeah! I thought about it! And I wouldn't have felt bad if I did!"

"_Oooooh_, so when _you _decide someone's crazy, it's okay for you to kill 'em, but when _I _decide _literal Psychos _are crazy and need killing, _I'm _a dictator and a tyrant? Aiight, gotcha, whatever makes you sleep better, pumpkin."

Arguing morals with AI Jack was an idiot's quest. Rhys knew that. He almost resigned to just sulking in silence for a moment. He half-wished the program _could _project and go pester Jack for a bit, to go and argue who was the better, real-er Jack. Given how badly the AI had dealt with the presence of Jack himself, Rhys couldn't imagine why the hell he had wanted to stuff a metal skeleton into every corpse he found and copy himself into an army of Jacks.

_Actually, _Rhys thought to himself, _that's a damn good point. His plan was totally crazy but...it's even crazy in Jack-logic. _

"Why did you want to do it? We had a pretty good team going on, you and me. Why get rid of that for a metal skeleton you could puppet around?" Rhys asked, turning a little to look at the grumpy AI. The man arched an eyebrow at him, arms folded across his chest.

"'Cause I wanted to be back properly."

"Okay, yeah, but after that, you were going to replicate the plan with every corpse you found," Rhys pressed on. "Dead bandits, put a skeleton in them, copy your code, boom, another Jack."

At this, the AI grinned and turned to face Rhys, unfolding his arms.

"_Seeee_? You're starting to come around to the idea, right? It's a great idea! Everyone's gonna be handsome, smart, and—"

"—and you'd _hate _it," Rhys interjected, watching as AI Jack's face fell in shock. "Look at you! You can't even stand the real Jack being alive. The last person who would agree to the idea that there could be more than one, real Handsome Jack...is Handsome Jack! You've spent your entire life telling people there is no one else who can possibly compare to you! That you are the _one and only Jack_!"

"Y-you're an idiot. I got _body doubles_, man."

"Yeah, but even they are just to protect you. They look and sound like you, but they don't act like you. They don't get the same treatment as you. If anything, they're a walking advertisement for your _There's Only One True Handsome Jack _campaign!"

At this, the AI stepped back, and it looked as though Rhys might finally be getting through to some last shred of logical thought in the program's chaotic code. Emboldened, Rhys pressed on: "This wasn't your plan at all, was it?"

"Y-yeah it was!" The program protested, face twisting in anger. "Sure, I'd _copy _my code into the rest of 'em, but they'd all be _copies_. I'd still be the original and the best!"

Rhys shook his head, chuckling.

"Seriously? Every copy of you would think like you — they'd _all _think they were the best and realest version of Jack. This idea is the least Handsome Jack idea ever, and there's no way you came up with it."

The AI froze, and Rhys wondered if his programming had crashed trying to process the existential crisis he'd been forced to confront. If he hadn't come up with the plan, then it had to have been coded into him. Nakayama, his creator, had been obsessed with cloning Handsome Jack — his obsession had been coded into the AI as its mission. To clone itself over and over. Nakayama's dream come true. Well, in part — Rhys assumed the professor may have intended for the metal skeletons to be placed into body doubles or physical clones, rather than just any corpse scraped up from Pandora.

AI Jack was executing a coded command...and yet, it went against the very nature he was created to replicate. Handsome Jack did not follow orders from others. And so, AI Jack now had a conundrum placed before him: as a program, he had to follow his code. But to act like Jack, as his code also commanded, he had to ignore his orders. The two conflicting parts of his existence seemed to crash together before Rhys' eyes as AI Jack visibly flinched back, head in his hands.

"No! No no no, it was my idea! It was **my** idea! That's what...it was my goal! Wasn't it?"

"We could ask Jack," Rhys offered, earning a dark glower from the AI as he looked up from under his bowed head at Rhys.

"_No_."

"Exactly. You know, I know it — that plan is _not _a Jack-style plan."

The AI looked horrified, and Rhys wasn't sure if his code was glitching at the edges or if the being was _trembling_. His eyes were wide, teeth bared as though he wished to snap a retort back at Rhys, to push this all away from him and get Rhys to admit a flaw in this theory.

Slowly, AI Jack looked down at the floor.

"I'm not...Jack? Am I? God I'm...not even a good _copy _of him..."

Rhys didn't dare respond. The AI might not be the real Jack, but he knew well he had the man's temper in spades. He would snap at the drop of a hat, and his emotional swings were as difficult to predict as they were with the real deal.

And yet, for all the fallout of their clash on Helios, Rhys felt a little sorry for AI Jack. Their bond was a strange one, and it had broken just as strangely as it had been created.

"That...might not be a bad thing," he offered. "I mean, you're not the real Jack. You're not the same person as the guy sitting in a cave over there, probably wondering if I've frozen to death out here. But, when you think about it, that's a good thing. It means you didn't do any of the things he did. The good and the bad. You're...kind of a blank slate. 'Cept for the whole 'trying to take over my body with a metal skeleton' thing, that's was a bad thing and that's totally on you. But not being Jack really isn't the worst thing in the world. Take it from someone who also is not Jack and...kinda wanted to be at one point too."

The AI considered him for a moment, a mixture of anger and sadness waging war behind his eyes.

"Yeah...you're right. It's not the worst thing," the AI admitted, and Rhys' heart nearly stopped to hear Jack's voice _agreeing _with something someone else said. But then, the moment past, and the AI snarled at him: "The worst thing is being trapped in a fricking _Void_. That bad thing? That's on _you_."

With that, the AI disappeared from view, leaving Rhys to deal with a tangle of shock, frustration, and just a glimmer of guilt. Before he could even begin to process it, the squeaking crunch of snow underfoot alerted him to someone walking up behind him.

"You're not gonna be able to feel your ass for a week," Jack's voice sounded. "Not an offer. Just an observation, sitting in the snow and all."

It was all Rhys could do to roll his eyes. While not strictly Jack's fault, he had already had enough of him. He'd not had the reserves to deal with AI Jack, and now he had less than that for the real Jack. But he hadn't expected the man to sit down next to him, hissing as the cold snow hit him.

"_Welp_, yup, okay, my balls just fricking burrowed inwards to seek warmth for the winter. Jeez, how have you been sittin' like this for so long?" Jack complained, turning to look at Rhys. Then, he nudged him with his shoulder, causing Rhys to rock to the side a little. "Look compadre, it would be really inconvenient for me if you died out in the snow right now. So whatever's eating you, spit it out. But...if you're gonna monologue me your inner woes and stuff, can we at least go back inside? I do a way better '_I'm totally listening_' face when I can actually feel my face."

If Rhys rearranged the letters a bit and applied some selective hearing, it nearly sounded like Jack had been nice to him. Nearly.

He shifted slowly, getting to his feet. Jack was right about one thing — his butt was _beyond_ numb. It was so cold that Rhys had forgotten what it felt like to even have a butt.

"Don't worry about it," he mumbled, offering a hand to Jack. The man looked at it for a moment before ignoring the offer and getting to his feet himself.

"Probably won't," Jack admitted, brushing the snow off his pants. "But you know what I _am _worried about? That Watcher alien thing."

The pair began to trek back to the shelter. Once again, Jack dumped his jacket over Rhys, the sudden warm layer a welcome gift.

"You don't trust the Watcher?" Rhys asked, wrapping himself in the jacket and smirking at Jack. "Shock."

The older man looked offended, either by Rhys' observation or the strangeness of their connection — one that felt old to Rhys and relatively new to Jack, leading to the odd event of Rhys knowing him too well, and Jack no doubt feeling like he shouldn't know him that well.

"Think about it. It said that Pandora is a cage for something terrible, right? And all these Vaults, they connect up and form the cage. But why let Vault Hunters run around opening those Vaults at all? And who designs a cage with multiple doors _and_ multiple keys if they don't want the big cage to ever open? I call bullshit on that."

He had to admit, Jack had a point. True, the Watcher expressed that they wanted the Warrior returned to its Vault to activate it again, no doubt strengthening the cage as a whole. But they had been notably absent during other Vaults being opened up in the first place.

But for now, Rhys just shook his head.

"Yeah, but you don't trust anyone by default."

"Hey, not by default! By _experience_. Got more knives in my back than a chef's kitchen, kiddo."

"Don't call me that..."

They arrived back to the shelter, and Rhys quickened his pace to a jog to get inside as quickly as possible. The warm air coiled around him, chasing away the biting cold and he couldn't help but sigh. Sitting himself down close to the fire, he stretched out his frost-chewed hand to the fire's heat. Meanwhile, Jack kicked the snow off his boots before stomping over and dropping down near the fire too, one leg bent up to rest his arm on. They thawed out in silence for a while before Jack piped up suddenly:

"You ever read up on your ancient human history, Rhysie?"

Ancient humans? It wasn't his strongest topic, though of course he knew the basics. Most humanoids across the galaxy could trace their origin back to ancient humans. But Rhys didn't know much more than that. He lifted his cybernetic arm to scratch the back of his head awkwardly.

"Well err...not really. Always been more of a '_Look to the future' _kinda guy."

Jack smirked, but for once, didn't make a comment on Rhys' gap in knowledge.

"Alright, time to catch up then, champ, 'cause we both gotta be on the same page to find success on this little mission of ours. So...ancient humans. Came from a planet called Earth, or Old Eden. Used to love a good ancient human story as a kid. And they had _loads _of stories man, like, we're talking gods and heroes and all sorts! Anyway, one of those stories? So there's this guy, can't remember his name, but he's sailing on the sea. And there's these creatures out on the water who sing. But it's beautiful — sailors would hear their song and turn their ships towards the sound and BAM!" Jack clapped his hands, causing Rhys to jump. "They'd smash into the rocks and drown! All 'cause they wanted to see what was making that sweet-ass music. And these pretty singers, okay, they can sing to make guys kill themselves trying to find them, but if anyone resists their tempting song, the creatures would die. So this hero guy, he tells his men to put wax in their ears so they can't hear the song, and he ties himself to the mast so he _can _hear it, but can't change the course of the ship. He resists the song, but still hears it, so the creatures die.

"Wanna know what these crooning creatures were called? _Sirens. _They lured men to a dangerous places. Got me thinking a while ago, back when I was researching Vaults and Sirens and stuff — what if our Sirens are similar? What if they're meant to tempt people towards the Vaults? I mean, Angel managed to trick two groups to do that with nothing but her voice."

Rhys took a while to digest what Jack was saying, turning his gaze to the fire between them.

"...But the sea sirens...they lured men to rocks? To die? So, what, our Sirens lure people to the Vaults to...get killed by the Vault Guardian?"

"I reckon that might be what they were created for, yeah. Sirens are powerful, people know they're connected to the Vault. People think '_Wow, if a Siren is just a fragment of a Vault's power, imagine what I could get if I open it!_' and splat! Pavement jam for a Vault Guardian to chew on. I dunno man, but what if the Eridans aren't the good guys? What if the Vaults and Sirens were made to be deathtraps...like the sirens in ancient human stories?"

"So you knew that the Vaults could have been designed to kill people. And you still kept trying to open Vaults? Even though they could kill you?" Rhys interjected, eyebrow raised.

"Yup."

"Why?"

"Duh. I needed that power," Jack said, blunt and honest and entirely to Rhys' perfect disappointment. He felt his face fall with bitter realisation as yet again, his former hero shed another shiny layer.

"You _so _didn't..." Rhys grumbled, hugging his knees a little closer. "You were the last guy on the planet who needed any more power, Jack."

"Oh, hop off your high horse there, Prince Charming! You opened a fricking Vault too!" Jack snapped, his angered expression piercing through the flames between him and Rhys. "Why'd you open the Vault of the Traveler, huh?"

Rhys felt his tongue tie and his heart skip. _Checkmate_.

"W-well...I...we wanted to...see what was..."

"You were acting like a goddamn Vault Hunter, and you wanted to see what shiny treasure was inside," Jack smirked over at Rhys. "Y'didn't need it, right? Your lift was pretty cushy, judging from your slick Atlas get-up there, pumpkin. But you opened that Vault up anyway. Besides..."

Jack shifted a little, as though toying with the idea of continuing. Eventually, he did, though his voice had lost some of the cocky edge it had displayed before. "It wasn't just for me. I mean, that was part of it. The Vaults could give me the power to bring peace to Pandora. I _knew _that. I'd seen it. But...Vaults...Sirens...the connection's there. I figured the Vaults might have the answer."

"Toooo...what question?" Rhys asked.

"How...how Angel could control her power. How she could be safe to live outside again."

Rhys' jaw tensed, his blood running cold. Jack, for what it appeared, misinterpreted Rhys' reaction as further judgement, and bitterness returned to his voice: "I know you think I'm a monster for locking her up. Hell, my second wife did. But what else could I do? I saw Angel lose control and kill her mother. And I saw how the guilt of it shattered Angel's heart. I could have let her continue living among everyone, a ticking time-bomb, and if she killed someone else, that's not just a death I coulda prevented. It would be blood on Angel's hands I could have saved her from. I had a duty to keep everyone safe — if I'd let her stay outside, knowing she could accidentally kill anyone, would that be the better choice? I needed to find something strong enough to help Angel control her powers."

To Rhys' right, a glimmer of silver light cut the sight at the corner of his eye, announcing Angel's arrival.

"He's lying," she said simply. "I could never leave the Core. Not after what he did to me. Even if he found a way for me to control my powers...I was trapped in the Core forever thanks to the Eridium he injected me with. To power _his _Vault key. If he ever wanted to save me, it was a long time ago." Angel turned and crouched down at Rhys' side, looking at him imploringly. He tried not to let on to Jack that he was listening to someone else as she pleaded: "Rhys, I...I don't know what exactly happened between you and the AI version of Jack. But I do know the real Jack. He'll make you feel sorry for him, or feel guilty for questioning him. He's dangerous in so many ways, Rhys...with weapons and words."

Between listening to Angel and trying to maintain an air of casual nonchalance, Rhys hadn't realised this had caused him to simply stare at Jack in silence. He had no idea what to think — true, he'd seen Jack's temper for himself, as well as his manipulation. But, on rare occasions, he'd also seen Jack be honest. Rhys had no doubt that everything the man had done was, in Jack's mind, the right thing to do. The man could not fathom that he'd made a wrong decision at all, let alone a selfish one. Somewhere along the line, in Jack's mind, fighting for himself was the same as fighting for everyone. Everyone who mattered. Which had eventually become a category of one.

His silence rubbed Jack the wrong way, and the man got to his feet, expression blighted with fury. Angel gave him a knowing look, unsurprised by this turn of events, before glimmering away.

"I shouldn't have bothered trying to explain it. God, can no one else _see _what I've been trying to do?! Why the _hell _doesn't this stupid fricking _armpit _of a planet _get it?! _I'm trying to _save _you idiots! You can see the buzz-axes! You can _see _the bandits running around! You've seen Vault Hunters open Vaults with no idea what's inside and people _died_. How hard can it be to see _they are monsters_ and _I can stop them_! I'm the only one who _knows _what's in the Vaults, so I'm the only one who should open them! It's not difficult! I literally can't make it any easier to understand!"

With that, the man stormed off out into the night air, one last flap of his arms in a gesture of despair.

"Maybe you missed it," Rhys mumbled to himself, "but it's _freezing _out there..."

All he wanted to do now was curl up by the fire and sleep. His eyelids were dropping, feeling heavier as the seconds ticked by, and every fibre of his being was tapped of all effort and energy.

It had been, for want of a better phrase, a rough day.

Rhys shuffled away a little from the campfire, staying close enough for its warmth but not too close that he might catch himself on fire, and twisted to lie down with Jack's coat over him like a blanket. He wasn't worried whether the older man would return — his temper would burn out his tantrum quickly enough, and no doubt he'd stomp back into the cave just loud enough to wake Rhys up out of spite.

His tired eyes turned to the opening to the cave, looking out sideways across the Vault. At first, he thought it was a trick of the light, but he could swear he saw a blue outline of line darting across the snowy plains. He ignored it, until it happened again. And again.

"I'm gonna regret this," Rhys told himself, hauling his tired bones up to stumble over to the front of the cave and look out properly. What he saw chased the tiredness away momentarily with shock and awe.

Across the snow-covered fields, Rhys could see _ghosts_. Or, at least, that was his best description of them. Creatures that looks similar to the Watcher, but forged with blue light, dashed across the snow and yet left no footprints. They were strangely ethereal and Rhys could see through their forms. Somehow, he knew that whatever they were, they weren't truly _there_.

And just as well, given the colossal creature that followed along behind them, made of the same ghostly blue energy. The monster bashed through the Vault on all fours, legs like thick pillars without feet. But again, not a single snowflake was disturbed by its presence. After a while, the ghosts vanished into the snow, only to be replaced before his eyes by another scene. This time, humans darted around the Vault Guardian-ghost, fighting tooth and claw, gun and bullet...but they fell. One by one, they were crushed underfoot as the Guardian rampaged. These phantoms were chased away too, leaving Rhys gawking out across the night air.

_What...the hell?_ He thought to himself, chest heaving, throat drying. Then, another flash pierced across his eyes, the distant wall of the end of the Vault far and away in the distance lighting up for a moment, revealing the outline of sandy dunes and a scorching sun beyond.

_Is that...the next connected Vault? How? What?_

Rhys stumbled back into the cave, eyes wide and panic rising.

"Rhys? Rhys! Look at your arm!" Angel's voice sounded as the digital spectre of the woman appeared at his side, looking at the small portion of his collarbone that hinted at the markings on his arm. Fumbling with the sleeve, Rhys managed to yank the sleeve up to view his arm properly. The once-benign markings were now alight with life, glowing a brilliant blue hue against the gloom of the night and the cave.

"B-b-but I— " Rhys babbled, looking to Angel for answers...then yelping. "What is _that_! Oh my god, **ohmygod**, get it to stop already!" He half-sobbed, backing away from Angel and closing his eyes and rubbing them furiously with both fists until they watered and ached.

"Rhys, calm down. Talk to me. What's happening?"

"I-I...there were people! Out on the snow! And now...just now...you—" Rhys opened his eyes again, red raw and swollen though they were, and focussed on Angel again. He had no idea how to describe what he was seeing: around Angel was an upright disc that framed her head like some strange sunburst or halo. The disc was whole, and yet, as Rhys looked closely, he could see splinters and cracks along its surface. Tentatively, he reached out towards it. Angel, though shocked, did not move. The frame-halo didn't react either, with Rhys' hand just passing through. "There's...something around your head...!"

"Ooookay. Well...I...can't see anything," Angel assured him. "But I believe you. I think—this is your power. You can see things others can't. Omnispective. And now you're aware of it, your power is starting to manifest stronger and more prominently. You're seeing the immaterial. That's…that's pretty cool, Rhys!"

"I don't like it!" He replied, still swatting either side of Angel's ears. "What is that?! Why is it around your head? Oh man...oh man, am I panicking? This feels like panic! Air! Cold air!"

With one last yelp, Rhys dashed out of the cave, only to slam into something. He quickly realised he'd crashed headlong into a returning Jack, who swiftly caught him by the forearms before he could fall backwards.

"Weather sucks. Don't go outside," Jack sniffed, shaking snowflakes from his hair. But Rhys wasn't looking at that.

"Oh no...no no no, it's on you too!" He said, eyes darting around Jack's head. The man raised an eyebrow at Rhys.

"Errrr, what is? What, did I get a spider on me or something? You look like you've seen a spider."

Rhys ignored Jack's goading, staring at the halo he sported. It looked like it might have been a disc like Angel's once, but his was different. It wasn't intact — instead, numerous shards and fragments floated around Jack in a vague circle. It took a moment for Rhys to see that the main break-lines of this strange halo were in the shape of a Vault symbol, the upturned-V splintering off into smaller fractures.

"Rhys?"

"It's...er...I don't...I don't know!"

Jack's eyes narrowed, and while Rhys had expected a flippant dismissal, the man seemed oddly invested in Rhys' plight.

"Try. What's going on?"

"Um...there's...I mean...I don't know what it is but I can..._see _stuff? Around...a-around your head."

Jack's eyes flicked momentarily to Rhys' arm, the sleeve still rolled to the elbow, his lips parting in surprise. He stepped forward, holding Rhys a little more firmly.

"First thing you gotta do? Calm. Down," Jack said, his voice steady and yet, threaded with a vein of fear. "Deep breaths. C'mon. Get it together, Rhysie."

Rhys did as he was told, hauling air in through his mouth and out his nostrils a few times before realising he was doing it the wrong way around. After a few rounds of deep breathing, Jack nodded. "Right...now, go lie down. Get some rest. We'll figure this out once your head's on straight. Got it?"

Rhys was too stunned and scrambled to argue. He just nodded limply. As he turned away to go and lie back down, he vaguely noticed something light up on Jack's mask — words in reverse, written on the underside and out of normal sight perhaps. He was too exhausted, emotionally and physically, to ask the man about it, and flopped heavily down to the ground and dragged Jack's jacket up to his shoulders.

As his eyes started to close, Rhys caught sight of himself in a sheet of ice that was crawling along the cave walls like oddly beautiful ivy, chased back just a little by the radiating outer heat of the fire. There, in the wavering reflection within the ice that stared back at him, Rhys could see a halo around his own head. It looked relatively whole, especially compared to Jack's. But as he turned a little, he could swear he saw it shiver and rattle along tiny, hairline cracks that blossomed across it.


	10. Chapter 10

Despite his turmoil the previous night, or perhaps because of it, Rhys slept soundly enough. He would have remained quite content too, until the world's worst alarm clock went off in his ear.

"Hey. Heeeey! Wake up, Dum-Dum! We got a Vault Guardian to herd back into its box, and _you_ got a gorgeous AI to get out of this gun. I mean, c'mon, I've been on my best behaviour and honestly, I'm not seeing it pay off?"

The static-riddled sound of AI Jack's voice crackling out of the gun by Rhys' side woke him just in time to see Jack's boot slam into said gun, sending it spinning across the cave, a trail of obscenities and colourful threats of violence spewing after it.

"If Nakayama wasn't dead, I'd fire him for fricking slander. _That?_" Jack pointed over at the gun screaming in the corner. "That's slander. Of me. Grounds for being fired straight out the nearest airlock. Y'sure Nakayama's dead?"

Rhys slowly sat up, one hand against his temple. He wasn't sure of anything any more. He _had _been sure that Handsome Jack was dead, and that hadn't been the case. He _had _been sure that only women could be Sirens, and that hadn't been the case either. He _had _been sure he wasn't a Siren…

"I saw his body...kinda all...taxidermy-style and on display. Pretty sure he wasn't breathing."

Jack put his hands on his hips, scowling over that the gun.

"Well that sucks. Seriously, that's such a crap attempt at me. I don't sound anything like that, and I_ definitely_ don't talk that much."

"You_ definitely_ talk too much, meatsack! I'm not an_ attempt _of you, got it? I'm my own me!" AI Jack yelled from the corner. "Hey! Why don't you come over here and I'll make you talk a whole lot less?! Rhysie? Rhysie, yo, pick me up and let's give this asshole a few more assholes!"

Rhys saw Jack's expression twist into a snarl. Strangely, he could also see a ghost-like movement of Jack's arm going for the gun at his side before the man had even moved to do so. Rhys was already on his feet, one hand grabbing Jack's arm to stop him before he'd begun, earning him a startled look from the older man.

"Woah woah, no! I-I know he...he can be _testing_, but...we might need him," Rhys stammered, looking over his shoulder at the gun. "He's just…going through some stuff. Doesn't deal with..._stuff _well. Or anything well, for that matter."

"Yeah, exactly, nothin' like me," Jack complained, bottom lip jutting a little as he gestured over to the fallen firearm. "I deal with stuff just great."

Turning back to face Jack, Rhys couldn't help but stare at him in disdain.

"Airlocking, shooting, or strangling stuff isn't exactly _dealing with it_. And it's pretty much exactly how your AI self deals with stuff too!"

Jack's eyes narrowed, but not out of anger. Instead, the man's gaze pierced Rhys with a mixture of curiosity and slight irritation.

"...Explain to me how getting rid of a problem _isn't_ dealing with it? 'Cause that is literally the definition of dealing with somethin', pumpkin."

"Oh my go—no! Okay, no, explaining to you _why _it's morally _not okay _to _murder your problems away _is not my job! That's not why I'm here!" Rhys despaired, turning to the gun again. "For either of you!"

With that, the man stomped over to the Jackhammer, grabbed it up off the floor and secured it to his back. He turned to face Jack again, noticing that he could still see the strange, shattered halo framing his head and shoulders, but far less prominent than it had been the previous night. In fact, if he relaxed, the image basically disappeared.

"Let's just...get the Warrior back in its Vault. We can deal with the double-Jack problem later."

"Y'know, no one in their right mind has _ever _called double-me a **_problem_**."

Rhys nearly smiled in spite of himself. Nearly.

"Now I know you're lying," he said, spinning on his heel as he walked, looking back at Jack and walking backwards out of the cave. "You've never talked to anyone in their right mind, Jack. Everyone on and above Pandora is _out_ of their minds."

* * *

In the hours that had passed the snow had let up, though it was still bitterly cold. Rhys found himself the glad bearer of Jack's coat again, hugging the oversized garment around himself. He'd pointed out that the other man had done this a lot since arriving in the freezing Vault, only for Jack to reply that Rhys shouldn't think too much of it.

"You're the only person who can see Angel," Jack had retorted, arms folded against the cold. "Not gonna have you freezing to death before I can save her."

They were tracking a path of melted snow and slush, though Rhys was attempting to call up his Siren powers in silence to see if he could "see" the Warrior's footprints. But he didn't exactly have a master's grip over his so-called omnispective abilities.

"It's not easy," Angel's voice sounded, the silver-hued image of the woman almost invisible against the snow as she appeared beside Rhys. "I...never really mastered my own Siren abilities before I...well, before I ended up stuck without a body."

Rhys looked to Jack, who was a little further ahead of them. He figured he was out of earshot and whispered to Angel:

"You got pretty good though?"

"Admittedly, being linked to the Hyperion network gave my power all the space it needed. The few times I wasn't connected to the network, it would all bunch up inside of me...and if I got even a little bit scared or upset..."

The Siren trailed off then, looking away with guilt and grief weighing down on her shoulders. "It only had to happen once. Just once. And I lost someone dear to me...no...I suppose I lost two people dear to me that day."

"...If you don't mind me asking…a-and tell me to mind my own business if you don't wanna talk about it, but..." Rhys stammered. Part of him wanted to know what could upset Angel so much, and part of him feared that whatever it was could happen to him. Angel glanced up at Jack too, then looked over to Rhys.

"I-I panicked. My powers as Siren had only recently manifested, but word got out. Specifically, it got to a bandit who thought he could sell me. He...tried to kidnap me. My parents tried to save me...but I got scared. And the more scared I got, the more my hands shook...and my power slipped through my fingers, just for a moment. I...made a turret go off. I'd never controlled something complex and powerful before and-and I lost control of it so fast. I...I didn't mean to but...but I couldn't get the machine to aim one way, it kept spinning like my mind and..."

Angel looked away, but Rhys already saw the tears in her eyes. "I...shot my mom. It was an accident b-but...she died. Because of me. And...I lost my dad that day too. Because that was the first day Jack hated me. Feared me. I...I understood, you know. At first. He had to lock me away to protect everyone else. I understood that more than anyone, and at first, I didn't hate him for that."

"...But then he never let you out."

"But then he never let me out," Angel echoed back to Rhys. "I kept thinking it would be temporary, that he was looking for a way for me to control my powers, so everyone could be safe, so I would never have to feel that pain of hurting someone again. For a long time, I thought he'd made the right decision. I believed in him...that he'd save me. That my dad was a hero. But...something changed: Jack opened his first Vault. And whatever happened in that Vault changed his mind about me — he wasn't going to save me anymore. He decided to keep me locked away, to use me to open more Vaults."

Angel wiped her eyes then, inhaled deeply, and looked ahead. Oddly, she was smiling.

"The worst part? That wasn't the moment I started to hate Jack in return. That wasn't the moment I decided I'd rather die than remain a prisoner. Because— because I believed I deserved it. That I had killed the woman my father loved, so the least I could do was help him achieve his dream. That maybe if I did, he'd forgive me and go back to looking for a way to help me with my powers. That I'd get my dad back. I still thought we were a team. As the years went by...I slowly realised we...we weren't a team. We weren't family. I was just another company asset. I didn't want his forgiveness anymore. I wanted _mine_. And I grew to hate him for letting me believe I needed forgiving for an accident! For letting me believe that only _he'd_ lost something that day, for acting as though that tragedy had only happened to him and not me too!"

Rhys didn't know what to say. His chest felt cold and uncomfortable, as though he were digesting a share of the guilt and shame Angel had unfairly carried over the years. And yet, it was hardly a black-and-white scenario — sure, Jack had dealt with it awfully in the end. But Rhys couldn't say that the right way was clear-cut and obvious. All he could see was the damage spiralling on and on...and it had fractured the halo around Angel's head.

_Psyche_.

The word slammed into Rhys so suddenly that he misstepped, nearly slipping in the snow. Shock rattled him to the core as he looked again at the strange disc around Angel's head and shoulders, and over to Jack at the fragmented mess that orbited his head. That was what he could see around people, Rhys realised. He could see their psyche, in all its battered, smashed, and shattered glory. All the damage of the years before, all the pain...and in Jack's case, his narcissism, his psychosis, and possibly something else entirely.

"I'm—" Rhys started to say, before he was interrupted by a crackly voice at his back:

"I'm sorry, Angel."

Both Rhys and Angel jumped, having forgotten the third set of ears in their conversation. Hanging from his back, trapped in a gun, Rhys had completely forgotten about AI Jack. The man's voice sounded again: "...I am. I'm...sorry..."

Angel looked distinctly uncomfortable, wrapping one arm around her torso and looking away. Then, she huffed a dry laugh and said:

"Why are _you _sorry? You didn't do anything. You're no more Jack than a firewall program is. You're just coded to look like him."

"But—"

Before AI Jack could speak again, Angel had vanished, leaving Rhys to awkwardly trudge along behind a blissfully ignorant Jack, while being horribly aware of AI Jack's pained silence. This was a whole other mess that Rhys was certain wouldn't be fixed once this particular mission was over, but he wasn't sure if it was his place to try and fix it at all.

Quickening his pace, he caught up with Jack's strides with ease. The man offered him little more than a sideways glance in greeting. Rhys swallowed — he'd spent all his bravery confronting Jack this morning.

"What?"

"Oh, er...I just...wanted to ask you about...what you said last night. About Sirens," Rhys lied. He supposed it wasn't a complete lie — he had wanted to ask Jack about a Siren. But all his confidence deflated under the other man's crippling glower, and Rhys wasn't sure if asking Jack outright about Angel was in his throat's best interests. Then again, if he seemed too keen to learn about Sirens at all, would Jack become suspicious? After all, Rhys hadn't told Jack of his own Siren abilities yet — as far as he was concerned, it would look like Rhys was asking because of Angel.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"W-well...between the whole ancient human stories and, and, some other stuff," Rhys trailed off limply, deciding not to try and explain the ghosts he'd witnessed across the field, "I'm starting to think the Vaults might not be what we thought they were."

Jack drew in a deep breath, exhaling it in a white-cold cloud as he cast his gaze away from Rhys and out across the long path of melted snow they were following.

"S'gonna be a long walk. Might as well hit me with your thoughts, Prince Charming. Lay it on me. Whatcha got?"

"O-okay, well, you said the sirens in ancient human stories would lure sailors to the rocks, right? Make them smash their ships into the rocks and drown 'cause they thought the songs promised their deepest desires?"

"Bonus points for Rhysie, payin' attention to the lecture!" Jack cooed, giving Rhys a soft punch to the upper arm. Or, Rhys figured it was meant to be soft — hands the size of dinner plates made for fists the size of small boulders, and Rhys nearly stumbled face-first into the snow.

"Woah! Er-er right. Heh. So...so if the Eridians made the Vaults and Sirens are linked to the Vaults...what if our Sirens are the same kind of deal? What if Sirens are meant to act as a lure...a promise of power to people outside? People look at Sirens, think 'Wow, I want power like that. Sirens are linked to the Vault, so there must be a power in there like the Sirens! I'm gonna open one!' and they get killed by the monster inside. Jack...what if the Vaults are manufactured Eridian death traps?"

Rhys watched as Jack's face settled into a rare, serious expression. It was somewhat heart-warming to see the other man taking his theory seriously enough to think about it.

"Y'might be onto something there, Rhysie. Guess it makes sense too, ya know, from a—" Jack twirled his hand, searching for a thought. "—_leadership_ perspective."

"_Leadership_? What does a network of orchestrated death traps have to do with leadership?"

"'Cause it brings order, duh. Think about it. When the Eridians went, the order of things went right outta the window. Pandora is the best, or really, the_ worst_, example of it. Bandits all over the place. Wasn't like that when the Eridians were here. Probably because people were scared to piss 'em off end get dragged into a Vault."

Rhys' skin went cold at the thought, his stomach knotting.

"I mean...order by fear doesn't seem much better than freedom by chaos, does it?"

"Eh, whichever kills less people," Jack shrugged.

"...Jack, you killed a_ lot_ of people for your idea of_ order_."

"Yeah. And it kept a helluva lot more people alive in the long run," Jack scowled over at Rhys. "What, you think the Vault Hunters that tried to kill me didn't pile up a load bodies on the way? Y'think they didn't tell everyone those bodies were _collateral for the greater good _or something? Hell, did _you _get to the Vault of the Traveler without any corpses behind you?"

"Th-that was—"

"Don't tell me! It was the _only way? _For the _greater good_? Newsflash, kiddo — _everyone _thinks they're doing _the greater good_, but we can't all be right. And we're not all right. Case in point: I'm right, so the Vault Hunters are wrong. Even though they _think _they're the ones in the right. You wanna know how you stop the wrong people thinking they're right? You have one good guy with a big frigging laser pointing at everyone tellin' 'em to stop, behave, and we can all live peacefully."

"_Aaaand_ you don't see the problem with that? Like...one guy having a big fricking laser?" Rhys asked, eyebrow arching at Jack.

"What, you think people will live in peace out of the goodness of their stinkin' hearts?" Jack laughed, responding to Rhys with his own incredulous look. "After all you've seen? Everyone is out for themselves, buddy. Bad guys don't stop unless you _make_ 'em stop. And a big laser means I can stop _all _the bad guys at once. 'Cause, y'know, I can't be in six places at once. Neither could the Eridians, that's probably why they had their death traps! Yo, maybe _that's _why they kept me alive? 'Cause I _get it_. I'm tryin' to keep order just like they did!"

"I'm not sure that's..."

The ground beneath their feet began a sharp descent then, halting their conversation as they were both forced to focus on not slipping and breaking their necks on the ice. Jack, of course, managed to effortlessly skid down the slope, one leg outstretched, and reached the bottom without stumbling much at all. Rhys skittled about at the top for a moment like a kitten discovering the horrors of a staircase for the first time.

"Yo, Rhysie! Get down here, man! We don't have all day!"

"Y-yeah no, I got this! Just-just gimme a sec!"

Rhys backed up a little, then tried to face the descent again. His stomach flipped over as soon as he reached the side, however, making him fall backwards onto his butt and scramble back in the snow. He could just make out an echoing "Oh my god..." of despair from Jack below.

"N-no wait wait, I totally got this! I...y'know, I'm just a bit..."

He heard the snow crunching again and suddenly, Jack appeared, having climbed up the slope back to Rhys.

"Honestly? You frigging suck at this whole Vault Hunter thing," Jack snapped, brow furrowing.

"Of the two of us, how many of us has opened a Vault without A) getting facially maimed, or B) getting sort-of-killed?" Rhys retorted with a pout, his pride wounded enough to be bold enough to snap back at Jack.

"Y'know, I came back up here to help you, you little shitstain."

"You came back up here 'cause I'm wearing your coat!"

"And you're almost as important to me right now as my jacket, you wanna know how many people _wish _I gave as much of a damn?"

With that, Jack turned around, lifting his arms back slightly. "But seriously, we already took a break. If we're gonna catch up to the Warrior, we gotta get a shuffle on, pumpkin. I'll getcha down for this one. Next time, I'm leaving you behind to turn into a cupcake-flavoured popsicle."

Rhys blinked, looking from Jack's back to his hands.

"You...you can't get down that slope with me on your back."

"Sure I can!"

"N-no, you'll fall over! With both of us!"

"Oh for the love of—get over here!" Jack growled, turning and lunging at Rhys. He hoisted the skinny man up over his shoulder with ease, despite Rhys' yell of shock and limbs swinging about.

"_Jack!_ No! Nononono, do _not _skid down that hill with me like this!"

"Shaddap or I'll use ya as the fricking toboggan."

"_Ja—aaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH!"_

With a running slide, Jack took on the slope with Rhys over his shoulder, leaving the poor man clinging to the other for dear life. By the time they reached the bottom in a cloud of powder snow, Rhys was coiled as tightly as he could over Jack's shoulder.

"Aaaand this is your stop," Jack announced, shrugging Rhys off and letting him fall into the snow beneath him. Rhys managed to get back on his feet, brushing snow from himself as he frowned at Jack for the manhandling.

But then, not too far in the distance, something stole all of his attention. Rhys could make out the Warrior's hulking, lava-formed mass, encircled by steam as snow melted and water evaporated rapidly around it. It was looking up at the sky, towards what Rhys could only assume was this Vault's Guardian. A huge, shimmering, blue-feathered monster with a staggering wingspan and long, peacock-like tail feathers was screeching in fury at the Warrior, striking with talons and a cruel, hooked beak. The snow-Vault Guardian's head snapped to Jack and Rhys then, and for a brief moment it looked as though the creature might attack. But the Warrior kept its attention as a clawed hand grabbed at its tail feathers, trying to yank the beast from the sky.

Despite the other guardian's acknowledgement of them, the Warrior once again ignored Jack and Rhys.

"That's the third time the Warrior has just flat-out ignored us...why?" Rhys wondered aloud.

"Well, it's following my orders, so it kinda makes sense that I'm not its target," Jack mused. "And you're a Siren — Sirens kinda get a free pass on Vault Guardians and protectors. Unless they shoot at 'em."

"Oh...makes sense, I g—" Rhys nodded, then froze.

_Wait,_ he thought._ I __didn't tell Jack I'm a Siren yet. _

Rhys whirled around, a face of perfect shock aimed at Jack. The man blinked, head tilting to the side as he met Rhys' look. Once again, just like the night before, Rhys saw it — something written on the underside of Jack's mask, out of sight, revealed by his manifested Siren abilities.

The words were clear to Rhys now, and he recalled the moment he'd asked Angel to digistruct the mask with something on it that would make Jack trust him...or at the very least, not try to kill him. He recalled Jack's shocked expression, how he had looked up at Rhys in the tree and had muttered: _that's...not possible. _

There, beneath the mask, Rhys could see what Angel had written to her father: _**He's a Siren.**_

"You knew!" Rhys exclaimed. "You _knew_ I was a Siren this whole time! That's the only reason you've not killed me! You're using me, just like you used Angel!"

_Angel...she knew since the forest? _Rhys thought to himself, a chilly pang of betrayal piercing his gut as he recalled their conversation about Steele's death aligning with Rhys' tattoos long after they'd left the forest Vault and arrived in the next. _She told Jack before she told me… _


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: Spotted this as I've read back over my work so — apologies if I swap between "Traveler" and "Traveller" when writing about the Vault of the...Traveler. I'm British, so while I am trying to maintain US spellings as used in _Borderlands_, I might miss one or two. Sorry! **

* * *

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Rhys experienced a potent punch of regret. Not at _what _he had said; it hadn't been a lie, after all. From what Rhys could gather, the situation that had occurred between Jack, his wife, and Angel had been nothing sort of a tragic accident, and he really couldn't say how a person ought to have handled the fallout. He could, however, say quite confidently how _not _to handle it — how Jack had done so, for example.

No, Rhys didn't regret _what_ he had just said. He regretted _who_ he had said it to. The last time Rhys had tried to discuss the damage Jack had caused in regards to his daughter, Rhys almost ended up swallowing his own teeth. Pre-empting a similar reaction, Rhys flinched back, his shoulders hunching up to coil away from Jack.

But the man didn't move. In fact, he barely looked angry. Instead, Jack simply looked insulted.

_Trap? _Rhys wondered to himself, uncoiling a little. Jack's unpredictability, particularly in regards to his outbursts of violence, left him more on edge than usual. In some ways, it made the man's company even less comfortable than his AI counterpart's. At least there was only so much AI Jack could do beyond ranting and yelling when his mood turned sour.

Handsome Jack's brow furrowed, and he shifted his weight to one foot. He looked Rhys up and down swiftly.

"Y'know what? I'm gonna be the bigger man and let that little slide. You wanna know why?" He nodded down at Rhys' shirt. "'Cause I'm not gonna take super-powered-deadly-daughter-parenting lessons from a guy who can't even dress himself properly. Yeah, suck the dribble back into your mouth before you look down at yourself, moron, maybe you'll figure it out."

Rhys looked down, scowling at Jack's retort. Of course he knew how to _dress himself_. It was one of the few things Rhys had been quite assured of: his impeccable sense of style. He was always stylish! Always!

"Least I'm not wearing the same yellow shirt I wore ten years ago. That isn't _vintage_, Jack, that's just _gross_," Rhys snapped back, giving up his self-assessment and looking back up. Jack was rolling his eyes hard enough that his irises retreated entirely behind his upper eyelids. "There's nothing wrong with my suit! Black and orange _pops_, and the orange accent totally works to bring out the blue in my tatto—_oh_."

Rhys looked back down, noticing how his arm tattoo peeked out over his exposed collarbone, thanks to his shirt not being buttoned all the way up.

His tattoo. Which was not a tattoo at all, really.

"And he figures it out! Top marks to Rhysie!" Jack laughed, and Rhys felt his face burning red. "That's right, Dum-Dum. Even if Angel hadn't told me, I'd have noticed you were a Siren already. Your markings have been glowing up in my face for a while now. Still...not sure _how_ you're a Siren, kinda goes against the grain a little, but I'll figure that out when it matters."

Despite his embarrassment, Rhys still found it within himself to square off against Jack. He was frightened of him, sure. But he wasn't the same sort of frightened he had been the day he first met AI Jack. He'd had a helluva lot of practice with the digital clone, and he wouldn't let the real Jack knock him back to being just another agreeable Hyperion employee.

"But you never brought it up," Rhys countered, sounding braver than he felt. He saw Jack's face soften in shock at Rhys' retort, and that helped to fuel him. "You were hoping _I _hadn't figured it out so I'd have to rely on you, right? You'd tell me it'd all be okay, you'd figure it out for me, when really you'd have known all along. You wanted another Siren's power to use for yourself!"

This seemed to press on one of Jack's many exposed nerves. His lip curled back, teeth flashed, eyes alight. At his sides, Rhys could see Jack's hand almost twitched to the firearm at his side. Almost.

"You wanna play _that _game, kiddo? Okay. Let's play! Let's play a good old fashioned round of _How the World Fucking Works,_ okay? You fell into the Vault. You woke me up. Why'd ya do that, Prince Charming, hmm? The goodness of your heart? The noble spirit of the hero possessed ya?"

"I er..." Rhys' heart deflated of all courage at Jack's outburst.

"Yeah. _You _needed something from _me_. You woke me up to use _my _know-how for the Vaults to save your own ass. If I'm using you, Rhysie, then you're using me just as much. There's a name for that — it's called _teamwork_. Give and take, baby. So, y'still gonna get mad about it? Or are you gonna pipe down, climb off your high fricking _donkey _over there, and realise you're just like _everyone else_ on this shithole of a planet?"

In a barbed, roundabout, poisonous sort of way, Rhys had to admit Jack had a point. He hadn't woken Jack up in that Vault to help Jack out. Hell, he'd have probably left him there to continue sleeping forever if it hadn't been for Angel and himself being stuck there too. Rhys had worked for Hyperion long enough to know everyone was out for themselves, and he had experienced enough of Pandora to know that truth echoed below Helios too.

If Jack was going to use Rhys' Siren powers for his own ends, well, he supposed it was a fair exchange for Rhys using Jack's knowledge of the Vaults to get out of there.

"...Teamwork then," Rhys agreed, folding his arms. "But only if you tell me what you want first."

"From you?"

"Yeah."

"I want you to help me save Angel. Thought I'd been pretty honest and upfront about that," Jack replied, voice threaded with confusion.

"Wait," Rhys' arms dropped to his sides limply. "Woah, hang on...that's it? That's all you wanted my Siren powers for?"

"Yeah."

"...Oh."

"And you made it out like I was being all _sneaky. _Kinda hurt my feelings, 'cause I thought I was being pretty open about it."

"N-no no, you were..."

"I don't _sneak_."

"Yeah, no, I know. Man, I-I'm sorry, Jack."

"It's cool, bro. Just...y'know...kinda stung..."

To Rhys' left, Angel glimmered into his sight, head in her hands.

"Oh my god, are you serious? Rhys, don't let him turn this all back on you! He knew and he didn't tell you still, remember?"

_Good point_, Rhys thought, giving Angel a sideways look to acknowledge her without tipping Jack off.

"W-well, you didn't tell me you knew I was a Siren. That kinda stung too."

"I mean, okay, fair," Jack conceded, shrugging. "So we're even? Eye for an eye, all exchanged, deal done, back to a blank slate?"

Rhys' lips pursed in consideration.

"I guess...but teamwork means we don't hide stuff anymore. Agreed?"

"_Eeeehhh_, no," Jack shook his head. "I'm still gonna keep some stuff to myself."

"Jack!" Rhys felt like he was arguing with a puddle at this point. "Teamwork is trust, right? A-and you're asking a lot for me to trust you! A _lot_. Like _ooooh my god you have no idea how much this a lot _is. So **this**," he pointed between the two of them, "really isn't going to work if you don't trust me back!"

"Yeah but...some of the stuff I'm not telling you would just distract you, pumpkin! Gotta keep your eye on the prize! Head in the game! Mind on the goal!" Jack beamed, walking over to Rhys and clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Trust isn't telling someone everything, Rhysie. It's accepting they won't, trusting they'll tell you what _you _need to know, and being _okay _with the fact you don't know everything that's going on in their head. Seriously, some of the stuff I'm not tellin' ya that I know about you would just distract you."

"...I think I'm gonna be _more _distracted worrying about what you're not telling me, to be honest."

"Y'think? Huh," Jack looked thoughtful for a moment, his other hand drumming on his chin. "Okay, well, how about this? I'll tell you _one thing _I know about you that you don't know I know, and we'll see if it distracts you from the overall mission. If it does, you accept _my _idea of teamwork isn't telling each other every little thing. If it doesn't, we go with your happy-sparkles-teamwork idea and stay up late telling each other everything and doing each other's hair and shit like that."

"I mean..."

"Cool! Agreed," Jack clapped his shoulder again, then turned to stand in front of him. "Okay, you ready? 'Cause I don't think you're ready."

Rhys swallowed. He suddenly did not feel ready. He was vaguely aware of Angel's look of despair off to his left as she watched her father playing Rhys like a complete fiddle. He wished he could ask her what Jack was going to do. He felt like she'd seen this play before.

"I-I'm ready...I guess..."

"Alright — so, one thing I know about you that you don't know I know? I know...thaaaat..." Jack leaned in closer, his lips close enough to Rhys' right ear that he could feel the man's breath. "You still have a plushie of me in your bed."

Rhys' eyes went wide. All moisture abandoned his mouth and throat. His heart forgot how to beat. His blood stopped. His skin chilled.

_How could he possibly know_—?

It was true. After the fall of Helios, Rhys had had something of a therapeutic purging of his impressive Handsome Jack collection. The posters, the shirts, the signed cards, the socks...his collection had burned along with the idealistic image he'd once held of his former hero, now so deftly dashed from Rhys' high regard. Well, he'd sold it rather than burned it. But the point still stood that he'd gotten rid of it all.

Save for one thing.

"I-it's...w-w-well that's just...it's one-of-a-kind...I didn't k-keep it 'cause of...anything else just, y'know...smart business?" Rhys stammered, stepping back from Jack and trying to ignore the fact that the man was still leaning forward, smiling like a feline that had just found its way to the cream.

"Mmm-hmm."

"Seriously, it's just s-super rare merch a-a-and I haven't had a c-c-collector offer a f-fair price? But as soon as they do?! I-it's going!"

"Hey man, whatever, doesn't matter to me."

"D-doesn't...matter to me either. N-not distracting at all!"

"So, what are we doing?"

"What?" Rhys blurted, his mind still fixed on the well-hugged plushie lying on his bed at home.

"What are we doing here? What's the next step?" Jack repeated, straightening up, face still alight with smugness.

"Err...we're..."

_How did he know about that?! AI Jack? Maybe. He might have seen it. I kept the ECHO eye in my room so...so could he see? Everything? Nah, not without being plugged in…_

"Rhys?"

"Errr, we're...the-the Warrior...over there..."

_I did plug him into that ECHO handheld one time. Did he see it then? I knew I shouldn't have been messing around that that. I'm not an engineer. God dammit, Rhys…_

"Rhyyyyyssssie? You're not _**distracted**_, are you?"

"I'm...er...I-I didn't mean tell me _everything_, I meant everything _relevant _t-to what we're working together for!"

"Oh don't be a sore loser!" Jack waved a hand at Rhys to dismiss his response. "You got rattled, Charming. Jack-style Teamwork it is!" With that, the man strode off to scout the two fighting Vault Guardians in the distance, no doubt to try and formulate a plan to drag the Warrior away and herd it back into its own Vault.

Rhys let his head hang in defeat, shoulders slumped forward and his soul exiting his body. Jack had ran a full ring around him and then danced away. Angel glimmered nearby, looking a little sympathetic to him. That only wounded Rhys more.

"Hey...um...about the Siren thing..." she hedged, fidgeting with her hands. "I-I'm sorry I told Jack. But you said it yourself, we needed him to not, well...kill you. To be honest, I wasn't even completely sure myself back then that you _were _a Siren. I was just trying to keep you alive."

"It's okay, Angel," Rhys sighed, lifting himself up a little to offer a tired smile to the woman. "I get it. I mean, I...half-broke a promise to you too, to keep us both alive."

"So...we're good?"

"We're good. This is Pandora, kinda. Promises can be broken to keep people alive, okay?"

Angel's lips formed a pained smile.

"Jack-style teamwork."

"The Jackiest," Rhys reluctantly agreed. Maybe there was a sliver of logic in Jack's approach to surviving Pandora. Sure, it was buried under a staggering amount of twisted logic, narcissism, psychosis, violence, and ego...but somewhere within it all was a tiny gem that could be passed off as some sort of wisdom.

"Alright, here's the plan," Jack announced his return, heading back over to Rhys; Angel immediately disappeared from his side. "This one is called: **Operation Fuck the Watcher**. Wait, no, that didn't come out right," Jack shook his head sharply, looking momentarily horrified. "God, no, okay, do _not_ fuck the Watcher. Rename! **Operation Watcher Can Go Fuck Itself**."

_Oh god, what's he starting a fight with now…?_

"Ooookay, why are we telling the Watcher to...to do that?" Rhys asked, hoping to keep his voice level and calm. One of them needed to be the sensible one.

"Well, you said it yourself. Your deathtrap theory? That the Eridians made the Vaults, shoved a monster in 'em, made Sirens to lure people in with the promise of power so they'd get squished by the Vault monsters. So...like, what, the Eridians were practicing a little species-culling? And one of those species was us? **Operation Go Fuck Yourself, Watcher**. _We _don't need the Warrior to be back in its Vault. _This_ Vault is still active, baby! Let's just leg it to the door out of here before the Warrior kills the Guardian and everything locks up! We can be out of here and enjoying the sunny sights of Pandora in no time!"

"Okay, but the Warrior will just...keep going. What if it breaks out of the Vaults and starts killing people on Pandora?" Rhys asked.

"Oh yeah, that'd be a real bummer. Yeah, I'd be _super _upset about that," the older man drawled, eyes dulling as he spoke. "Wow, what a fricking awful turn of events that would be. Dead bandits. Wow. Heartbreaker. There a shower at your place so I can sit in it and cry?"

"Jack, not _everyone _on Pandora is a bandit," Rhys said. He was about to follow up with the obvious fact that it wasn't right for Jack to be the self-proclaimed executioner for bandits either way, but he'd pick that fight another time. Now that he knew precisely why Jack loathed bandits so much, Rhys knew he'd have to broach that topic a little more carefully.

"_Eeeehhh_, evidence to the contrary."

"There are innocent people on Pandora, Jack!"

Jack blew a raspberry trying to contain a laugh.

"_Pfft! _Ehahahaha! Good one!"

"Jack, I'm serious! You can't leave everyone on Pandora to die!"

"Why not? You ever tried savin' 'em? _I_ have. Ungrateful shit-eating bandits, every single one of 'em!"

"B-but..." Rhys nearly protested again that not everyone on Pandora was a bandit. Or, more accurately, not everyone who disagreed with Handsome Jack was automatically a bandit, which seemed to be the case these days in the older man's addled mind. Instead, Rhys opted for a route he was pretty sure would strike a chord with Jack: "But...you're the hero. Heroes are meant to save everyone, even if they don't get any gratitude. Even if they have to sacrifice everything. That's how all the stories go — the hero is the guy who gives everything for everyone, even if they get nothing back for it. Aren't you the hero, Jack? Isn't that why the power of the Vaults kept you alive?"

There it was. The sparkle of self-assurance came back to Jack's mismatched eyes, a glow of self-pride pushing his shoulders back a little, straightening his stance just a touch. Sure, Jack could reduce Rhys to a stuttering mess...but Rhys wasn't a fool. He knew how to play Jack just as well as Jack played him.

"I mean, yeah. _Obviously_, I'm the hero. The Vault-chosen hero!" Jack crowed, resting his hands on his hips. "I was just _saying _that the Watcher might not be a good guy. And I — er, we — as good guys, maybe shouldn't be helping them out by getting the Warrior home to its Vault."

"Sure. But we should protect everyone from the Warrior first, _then _deal with the Watcher once there's no threat from a giant lava-monster," Rhys agreed, nodding over to the fighting Vault Guardians.

"You make a good point, pumpkin. Alright, we'll put a pin in **Operation Cactus-Hugs for the Watcher** for now. Let's go save the world, Rhysie!"

Evidently, a little ego-stroking was all the planning Jack needed. He was already marching off in the direction of the Warrior, leaving Rhys to stumble after him.

"You got a plan?" Rhys asked as he jogged to catch up with the other man.

"Yup."

"...You wanna share with the team?"

"Huh?" Jack's head tilted a little to Rhys, confusion flitting over his features for a second. "Oh! Oh, right, sorry. Not used to the whole 'working together' thing. I've never really...worked with a team before. 'Cept that one time on Elpis, and even then I was on my own trying not to get shot on Helios while everyone else was butt-slamming on the moon. Not sexy, by the way, I mean literally just slamming their butts onto the moon. But yeah, sure, plan. Plan is get the attention of the big guy, then run like hell through this Vault, the next Vault, and back into _his _Vault."

"A-and how...how are you going to erm...get his attention?" Rhys swallowed and looked over to the Warrior, which was loomed ever-closer as they walked. "He's kinda been ignoring us."

"Rhysie. Rhysie, Rhysie, Rhysie...do I _look _like the kinda guy who gets ignored?" Jack asked, slinging an arm over the other man's shoulders. "If I want someone to pay attention to me, believe me —" Jack moved away from Rhys then, unhooking his arm and revealing that he'd taken the AI-infused gun from Rhys' back. He slung it over his own shoulder and grinned. "—they pay attention."

Rhys twisted to grab at his back, confirming the gun's disappearance despite Jack waving the firearm in front of him.

"Hey! You have your own gun!" He protested, pointing at the Hyperion assault rifle on Jack's hip. "I-I need mine in case it goes for me! I need protection!"

Jack arched an eyebrow, offering Rhys a pitiful smile.

"I mean, I've seen you try to shoot a gun, sweetness. Leave the protecting to me. Besides," Jack gave the AI-gun a shake. On cue, AI Jack's voice crackled over the speakers:

"That is NOT how you wake me up from sleep mode, Rh—oh. Oh no. No no no, I am NOT getting used by Crap Jack!"

The gun began to rattle and vibrate in Jack's hand, and the man had to grasp at the safety to stop AI Jack from unleashing a tornado of bullets on him. Still, the man was smiling, and he winked at Rhys. "_This'll _get Lava-Face's attention."

Jack turned and, after a moment of winding back, he hoyed the still-yelling gun overarm at the Vault Guardians. Rhys could hear AI Jack's yells as the gun arched over the skies — it was an impressive throw, and he had to shield his eyes to keep watching it. It hit the ground near the Warrior's feet and began bouncing, spraying bullets all around it. The Warrior looked down at the screaming assault rifle.

"You're gonna pick him back up though, right?" Rhys asked, turning to look at Jack who was nearly doubled-over laughing. "Right?"

"What? Oh, er...I mean, I wasn't _gonna_..." Jack admitted, wiping a tear away. "Was kinda hoping the Warrior would stomp on him."

For a reason Rhys had been trying to name for months, the idea of AI Jack being crushed out of existence made him heart plummet. Perhaps that reflected on his face, and perhaps more surprisingly, it meant something to Jack, as the older man back-pedalled a little. "But yeah, alright, if I get the chance, I'll grab the bullet-sneezing idiot. Be right back, Charming. I gotta go piss off a Vault Guardian."

Jack set off at a run then, leaving a worrying Rhys to stand a safe distance away. He could just about make out Jack yelling at the Warrior, who had looked away from the snowy Vault Guardian to the gun at its feet. This led to the monster noticing Jack for the first time.

Rhys' breath caught in his throat as the huge draconian creature slowly turned away from its last fight to round on Jack. One wayward stomp would end the Hyperion CEO for good this time, no questions asked, no ludicrous plot-twist to wiggle through.

Jack dove forward, grabbing the assault rifle from under the Warrior's feet. With some sort of silent truce, AI Jack appeared to cooperate, allowing Handsome Jack to open fire on the Warrior. Whatever protection he had as the Warrior's commander broke in that instant. The Warrior howled, slamming a hand down near Jack. The man managed to roll out of the way, scrambling to his feet and darting away from the furious creature.

"Hey! Over here! C'mon, you great big steaming pile of useless rocks! Yeah! You couldn't even kill a bunch of lousy VAULT HUNTERS, you no-good, craptastic, shit-for-brains—_woah!_"

The Warrior chased after the man a short distance, catching Jack with one swipe of its arm.

"Jack!"

Rhys could only yell out as Jack was smacked aside by the Warrior, crashing across the ground, the Jackhammer spinning out of his hands. For a moment that stretched in agony for Rhys, it looked as though Jack wouldn't get back up. In the end, Rhys could see the man getting shakily to his feet.

Once more, he demanded the Warrior's attention, managing to drag the monster a few more paces away from the other Vault Guardian before being struck again. And again. And again.

"He's going to get himself killed before he makes it to the next Vault with the Warrior, let alone through another Vault," Angel's voice sounded next to Rhys. He wasn't entirely sure if the worry in her voice was simply for the mission being in jeopardy. "We have to do something."

By now, Jack had managed to coax the Warrior within a few yards of the smashed wall that led to the forest Vault they had come through. But Rhys was sure Angel was right — Jack couldn't keep this game up for the length of another Vault. His skeleton would be dust long before they got halfway.

"Plan?" Rhys asked, turning to Angel in desperation.

"I still have my powers," she said. "I might be able to control the Warrior, but I need something technological implanted on it. If we can get something connected to its brain, I might be able to puppet it. In theory."

Rhys looked around — the ECHO eye was in the Jackhammer, and the digistruct was too valuable to lose. There was one other thing…

"Aw man...not again..." he muttered, fingers absently coming up to the temple port buried in the side of his skull. "Angel, would...would this work?"

Angel turned to look at where Rhys was tapping against his head. Her eyes went wide in shock, but she slowly nodded.

"Y-yes. But...Rhys, that thing's connected to your brain. It'll—"

"Hurt like hell. Yeah, it's erm...it's not the first time."

His fingers lingered over the temple port, recalling the horrific images of the first time he had torn the cybernetic from his head. Rhys had wanted nothing more than to remove AI Jack from his life. Now...now he was going through that same pain again to try and keep the real Jack in his life.

_Least I won't have to replace it this time_, he thought to himself numbly, trying to cheer himself up in some strange way. _I can see Angel and AI Jack without this...well I guess I can see **anything** without this now. _

He brought his cybernetic arm to reach up across his body, grabbing at the ridge of the port at the left side of his head.

"This isn't gonna be fun..."

With a single inhale to prepare himself, Rhys yanked at the implant with all his might. That alone might not have managed much, but thanks to the strength of his cybernetic arm, the temple port began to loosen. A few more painful yells and one fall to his knees later and Rhys was staring at the torn-out temple port now sitting in the palm of his robotic hand.

"Rhys! Rhys, are you okay? Oh my god, that was...that looked..." Angel stammered, leaning into view and making to put a comforting hand on Rhys' shoulder, only for her digital image to phase through. "Rhys?"

"I-I'm good," his voice shook around a reply, his skin clammy with cold sweat. "Gotta...get this to Jack..."

With a lurching motion, Rhys managed to get back up to his feet. The world swam around him, his mind dulled and his stomach roiled, nauseous. Still, he battled through, taking a few staggered steps forward.

"Jack! JACK!" Rhys yelled. The older man was scrambling across the ground on all fours, trying to escape another downward punch from the Warrior. The creature's fist slammed down into the ground near him, but Jack managed to get away and shoot Rhys an annoyed look through his bloodied face.

"_Busy_!" He yelled back.

"Get over here! I've got something to make this easier!"

"Y'couldn't have given me it _before _it broke my ribs?!"

"I didn't have—just get over here!"

Jack glanced back at the Warrior, than half-ran, half-limped towards Rhys.

"Yo, throw it! I don't wanna get too close, it might turn you into Rhys-jam!" Jack shouted, clapping his hands and then cupping them together to beckon Rhys to throw the object to him.

Rhys tried to mimic Jack's impressive overarm throw, and was quietly proud of himself with the temple port soared across the air and landed deftly in Jack's palms. Jack, however, looked less impressed. He gave a cursory glance over his shoulder to check how far away the Warrior was — did he have time to yell at Rhys? Yes? — before yelling at Rhys: "_WHAT THE FUCK, RHYS?!"_

"It's my temple port!"

"I know what it is! Waddya want me to do with this, shove it up its butthole and download a virus?!"

"What—why would—how did you get to— _no?!" _Rhys quickly gave up trying to follow Jack's train of thought on that one. "Plug it into its head!"

"..._RHYS, ITS HEAD IS SEVERAL FRICKING HUNDRED FEET OFF THE GROUND." _

"Angel's gonna use it to control the Warrior! To save _your_ ass, Jack! Connect it to the digistruct so she can move over first!"

Jack looked as though he might protest, his whole body locking up. But then, he grabbed the digistruct at his leg and connected the device to the detached temple port in his hand. Rhys watched as Angel appeared over Jack's shoulder, nodding over to Rhys to let him know she'd moved from one device to the other.

"Alright, good to go!" Rhys called over. Jack made to say something, but oddly for him, the words seem to trap in his throat. "Jack?"

It took Rhys just a moment too long to realise why. "It was _her_ plan, Jack. Trust her."

In any other situation, Rhys was pretty sure Jack would have yelled back at him. This time though, Jack turned and made his way back to the Warrior. The creature had begun to lumber back to the snow Vault Guardian, no doubt wanting to finish off its battle there. Rhys set off at a run too, deciding not to be left behind this time.

Meanwhile, Jack had caught up to the Warrior and had leapt onto its leg, starting to climb up the monster's limb.

"Ow! Hot hot hot hot hot!" Jack hissed around a clenched jaw, holding the temple port by the wires with his teeth and trying to pull his sleeves up to protect his hands. "Owwww!"

The man managed to scale the Warrior with alarming agility and only one or two moments where he lost his grip for a moment and nearly sent Rhys' stomach crashing out of his ass.

Climbing up to the Warrior's shoulder, Jack steadied himself and took hold of the temple port. "Fastest way to the brain, baby!" He grinned, slamming the temple port directly into the Warrior's eye.

The effect was immediate. The Warrior threw back its head and roared in agony, thrashing and howling. Rhys could see thousands of wires and connections pouring out of the temple port, ones he was sure didn't exist in the physical world — was this Angel's Siren power that he could see? The tendrils burrowed through the Warrior's eye, wrapping around its head. Behind the creature, Rhys could see a silvery ghost of Angel's image standing over it. He'd never seen her look more like, well, an all-powerful Siren in all the time he'd known her.

The creature was still resisting the Siren's call for the moment, however. With one more trashing lurch, the Warrior managed to throw Jack from its shoulder. The man gave a cry of shock, arms outstretched to try and grab onto something, anything, to save himself from falling hundreds of feet to certain death.

Rhys only saw a glimpse of Angel reaching out in vain as Jack fell, unseen by her father and unable to do anything to help. He only felt his heart freeze in fear for a moment, before something else, something more instinctive kicked in.

Everything seemed to slow before his eyes. Rhys could see Jack falling, a ghostly trail beneath him echoing exactly where the man would fall, his path all the way to a bloodied smear on the ground. He could see the psyche-halos encircling Angel and Jack's heads, the Vaults connected to this one, the bonds subduing the Warrior to Angel's will.

He ran. He had no idea what he was planning to do. Rhys didn't realise how fast he could run, was this adrenaline? Why? Why was he so concerned for this awful man, this terrible man who was plummeting to his death?

Rhys couldn't say exactly when his feet left the ground. He hadn't _done _anything to cause the wings of a Siren to erupt from his back, not that he knew of anyway. Still, the delicate, moth-like wings that had unfurled without ceremony did not offer Rhys much in the way of additional strength when it came to catching Jack mid-fall. Jack's back slammed into Rhys' arms, dragging the Siren downwards sharply before he recovered with a frantic flapping of his wings.

He looked down at the flabbergasted man in his arms: Jack's eyes were pinned over Rhys' shoulders, half-stunned at the sight of his wings and the-rest-stunned at having been _saved _by the man.

Rhys allowed himself a smug smirk at Jack. He was sure the opportunity wouldn't come by often, so he was going to grasp it with both hands.

"Leave the protecting to _who_?"

Jack's nose wrinkled, as though he had smelt something sour.

"Okay, yeah, wow, that...that did _not _suit you at all. That was like watching my grandma tryin' to give someone a hug. Weird _and_ unnerving."

"Are you serious?! I just saved your life!"

"Yeah, and honestly? Letting me die instead of dropping that line on me and leaving me to cringe out of my asshole would have been less cruel."

Rhys just rolled his eyes, moving a little haphazardly away from the Warrior who seemed rooted to the spot under Angel's command for now. His feet finally grazed the ground, and Jack pushed himself from Rhys' arms as soon as it was safe to do so, landing shakily on both feet. The man was battered, bruised, and bloody...but alive.

In a rare moment of pure lucidity, without any fronts or masks or personas, Jack looked at Rhys. His brow was knotted in thought, face set in a serious expression, as though he were trying to answer a question himself without asking for help.

"Why...didn't you just let me fall? You know how to get out of the Vaults, you don't need me now. You don't get anything for saving me. Why risk it?"

Rhys couldn't even answer for himself. A long time ago, he'd have put his life on the line for Handsome Jack, his hero, his idol, his _goal_. Now? After everything he'd been through with AI Jack and Hyperion...hell, he'd even debated crushing the eye and killing every version of Jack off for good. Why _had _he saved the man now, given the chance?

"...There's no _why_, Jack. It was just the right thing to do," Rhys said. And it was true. A simple answer to a complicated tornado of emotions: saving a dying man was just the right thing to do. "Someone needs help, you save them. Right?"

Jack didn't reply. For once, his shocked expression did all the talking for him. If Rhys didn't know better, he could have sworn he saw something in Jack's eyes he'd not seen from anyone at Hyperion before, save for Vaughn: _admiration._ From Jack's expression, it seemed to scare him as much as it did Rhys.


	12. Chapter 12

The rag-tag group traipsed back through the frosty tundras of the Vault, its furious hawk-like Vault Guardians screeching after them. It did not give pursuit, much to Rhys' relief — no doubt the sight of the Warrior stomping ahead of them gave it pause, and it was just as well. Every bone in Rhys' body was drained of energy, and though Jack had rejected his offer to help him walk, the other man's obvious limp gave away just how badly his round with the Warrior had gone. Rhys could see sweat beading on Jack's neck despite the crisp cold air around them, but he knew better than to suggest to the other man that he needed to rest.

Not that they had time to rest anyway. Rhys looked up at the Warrior and, with a little focus, his omnispective ability revealed the shadow of Angel hovering over the creature's head. It was clear that while the fight might have been over for Jack and himself, it had just begun between Angel and the Warrior. Every so often, the beast's head would lurch to the side, trying to break free of the Siren's control.

As they crossed through to the forest biome of the next Vault, Rhys could see the Watcher reappearing behind them. No one else reacted, leaving the man to question if the Watcher was using some sort of cloaking ability that only his eyes could see through.

"Jack...hey, turn around," Rhys nudged the other, realising his error before the man yelped.

"Ow! God..._dammit, _you tryin' to break my last rib?"

"S-sorry! Sorry, forgot, sorry, look just...turn around!" Rhys half-apologised, half-pleaded. Scowling, Jack tossed a glance over his shoulder. From his expression, he hadn't noticed the Watcher. His eyes darted left and right and then back to Rhys.

"Whatcha seein', Rhysie?"

"The Watcher...they're right there, and—"

Rhys pointed at the hole between the Vaults that the Warrior had previously torn asunder, the very same that they had reentered through. Even as he spoke, he could see the Eridian being holding their arms up to the gaping wound in the Vault. Before their eyes, the broken wall began to mend, stitching and shrinking until the neighbouring snow Vault was out of sight to all but Rhys. The Watcher turned to face them, and Rhys was sure he saw their head tilt up to the Warrior. He couldn't see the Watcher's eyes, but he would bet his company that they narrowed in suspicion.

"Oh. Well, that's handy. Least Mother Goose won't be following us," Jack shrugged, winced, then went back to limping after the Warrior. When he next spoke, Jack didn't look at Rhys, keeping his gaze fixed firmly ahead. His voice sounded a little strange too; a little softer, a little less...Jack: "H-hey...how's er...how's Angel holding up?"

"She's...she's good," Rhys answered.

"She's _not _good," Angel retorted. "Rhys...this...beast is fighting against every step! It's _burning _me away!"

His head snapped up at the panic in Angel's voice — this was a mistake. Jack cottoned on to Rhys' reaction and stepped cumbersomely to the side to whirl on him, concern etched across his features.

"Rhys? What is it? Is she…?"

Though the Warrior's eyeline was sky-high above Rhys' head, he could see the temple port slammed into its eye. The edges were already melted and scalded, and he could see the device warping under the heat.

"A-Angel...you said before you were stuck in the cloaking device...if it ran out of power or broke, you'd—"

"Wait, wait wait — _she was in my cloaking device?! And you didn't tell me?!_" Jack snapped, fumbling for a moment with the device on his jacket then throwing a furious glower at Rhys. "You son of a—"

"Not now, Jack!" Rhys snapped, unsure of where the confidence to do that had come from. Maybe it was his concern for Angel. "Angel?"

"Y-yeah...if the temple port burns out with me still in it, I...I can't escape. I'm still not connected to any network, just this. I'm stuck here, I-I'll burn with it," she admitted, a thread of fear permeating through her otherwise calm tone. A mask of resolve that Rhys was learning to see through the more he got to know the woman, and with every crack that formed in her mask, another part of his heart broke to witness it.

"No, we're not gonna let that happen," he assured her, jerking his head to Jack. "You _know _he won't let that happen. C'mon, let's hurry to the Warrior's Vault and then we can get you outta there."

"Let what happen?" Jack asked, looking up to the Warrior then down to Rhys, increasingly agitated. "Rhys?! What's going on?! If my Angel's in trouble 'cause of your stupid plan to shove a port in the Warrior's eye, I'll be shoving somethin' into _your _eyes pretty soon, buddy!"

It really was a skill that Jack could remain menacing in his delivery of colourful threats while his voice was rasping against several broken ribs and bruises. And possible internal bleeding.

Before Rhys could respond, the Warrior's footsteps came to a thunderous halt. Peering out to the side, he looked at what Angel would have stopped for in a time so critical as this. There, standing before the Warrior like an ant against a Rakk Hive, was the Watcher.

"...It did not complete its task. How did you order it to obey another?" They asked, head tilting to the side.

Once again, Rhys' skin crinkled at the Watcher's presence. He just couldn't shake the feeling that the being was not to be trusted.

"It's er...some Atlas tech."

"Atlas tech…?"

"Yeah. Controlling...tech...thing…"

He could _hear _Jack rolling his eyes.

"Wow, brilliant pitch there, Mr Atl-_ass_. Real punchy. Award-winning performance."

"Shut up…!" Rhys hissed to his side.

The Watcher looked between them, then back up at the Warrior.

"This is a Siren's power, there is no question. But it is not yours."

At this, Rhys' jaw dropped.

"_God_, for the love of...did _everyone _know before me?! Does Vaughn know? Does Sasha know? Was I the _last _person to know I am a Siren?!" He exclaimed, turning to Jack for some kind of confirmation. The man offered a one-armed shrug, one arm wrapped around his broken torso.

"Probably. Your whole left side is a _blue tattoo_, pumpkin. It probably crossed a few people's minds."

"G-guys? I really don't have time for this!" Angel interrupted them, making Rhys feel immediately guilty for stalling. "Gonna er...try and step over the Watcher but...tell them to get the fu—err, I mean, tell them to please move!"

The Warrior gave a roar, then continued on its beeline path for the next Vault. The Watcher scurried out of the way of the monster's stomping feet, moving swiftly to Rhys' side.

"Her Siren ability allows her to upload her consciousness to any technology...but using it to cheat her own death is an imbalance. Her physical body died, so she can no longer carry out her duty as a Siren. She must relinquish her powers."

"Hey, ya weird-ass metal-noodle, if that's a little death threat you just squawked out, you and I are gonna have problems," Jack snapped, teeth bared. "Problems like my hands snapping your stupid, scrawny little neck in half!"

If Jack's promise of violence worried the Watcher, they did not show it. Instead, their attention was fixed on the Warrior's retreating form.

"...It doesn't matter. Her powers will pass on soon, I see."

"What?" Rhys blurted out as the Warrior's cry filled the air around them. It was loud enough that he could feel the vibrations pounding against his heart and through the ground. In the short distance the creature had gotten, the Warrior had stopped suddenly and was twisting and writhing violently. "Oh no...Angel!"

Rhys set off at a run, but was surprised to see Jack managing to outpace him despite his injuries. Without a word the man forced himself onwards, leaping up onto the Warrior and climbing up the scorching scales of the creature once more. Meanwhile, Rhys screwed his eyes shut, willing his wings to appear.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon! Really need you!" He muttered to himself, feeling nothing unfurling from his back. He opened one eye in time to see Jack dangling precariously by one arm from the thrashing Warrior. His heart slammed once, jolting adrenaline through his veins and then, finally, Rhys felt the silken light of four wings blossoming behind him.

He shot upwards, making quick work of the Warrior's staggering height and hovering at its eye level. The port was there, within arm's reach, near-bubbling as the metal and plastic gave away to the flames of the Warrior.

"A-Angel? If you can't make it to the Warrior's Vault, give me a sign!" he asked. On cue, Angel's form appeared over the Warrior for a split second, but it was all Rhys needed — she was _screaming_, holding her head in her hands. "Okay, nope, getting you out of there, right now!"

Rhys grabbed the scalding hot device from the Warrior's eye, backing up as the creature howled. He juggled the port between his palms, trying to cool it down by blowing on it.

"_Rhys!_ Pass her to me, the digistruct is safer!" Jack hollered, hanging on to the Warrior still. Rhys flew down to him, offering his hand.

"The _ground _is safer too."

Jack eyed Rhys wearily, then said:

"...If you tell _anyone _about this, I'll run Atlas into the ground so hard you'll need an archaeologist from the future to dig it up and identify the remains."

"Loud and clear..."

Jack pushed off from the Warrior, landing against Rhys with his arms wrapped around his neck. Rhys let out an inelegant cough as the man dragged the air from his throat.

"_Fuck_—! Jack. You're. Choking. Me."

"Oh my_ god_, why does_ no one_ know the difference between choking and strangling?" Jack lamented, though he shifted his weight to let Rhys huff in a huge gulp of air before awkwardly lowering them both to the ground. As soon as Jack's feet found solid ground, he yanked the temple port from Rhys' grip and started to work on plugging the wrecked device to the digistruct.

"C'mon, c'mon..."

"Jack, we should_ definitely_ move somewhere safer!" Rhys stammered, eyeing the furious Warrior that was mere feet away from them and raging against everything around it.

"Yeah yeah, sure, just let me plug this in! Angel...Angel, are you okay? Argh, god, Rhys, c-can you check? Is she...is she—?" Jack hesitated, then shoved out a shaking hand to Rhys, holding the digistruct out to him. "Is Angel in there? P-Puh-Plll._..please,_ check for me?"

Rhys felt his heart pulling at the rare sight of, well...he wasn't quite sure what it was. Another brief glimpse at the man who became Handsome Jack. Just a guy. He glanced across from Jack, noticing a silent Angel standing by his side. She was watching Jack too, though with little warmth in her features. She caught Rhys' eye and nodded once.

"Y-yeah...yeah, she's safe in the digistruct now."

"Oh thank god...okay...okay, right, erm, yeah, let's er...regroup away from the tap-dancing Vault monster and rethink a plan," Jack's breath shook through his voice, but he seemed to be collecting himself back into the safety of his persona once more.

With one last screech of anger, the Warrior lumbered away, thankfully away from _them_. Rhys watched after it, feeling wretched as his Siren's ability kicked in to politely show him the exact path of destruction the Warrior was marching off on. Off to smash another wall in and head into another Vault.

"Not again..." he moaned, a hand coming up to his forehead. "This _Vault Wrangler _job really isn't what it was cracked up to be."

"...Then you should have let her burn," the Watcher's voice hissed to Rhys' left. The being had shown themselves again, and once more, despite the armour plates, Rhys was pretty sure he could tell how their face contorted behind it. "She could have gotten it through to its own Vault at least...and her death would release her powers back into the universe. All would be in balance again."

"What is it with you and balance?" Rhys asked, narrowing his eyes. "You'd let people die for it. And you keep saying things need _replacing_. What exactly are you asking of us? 'Cause I don't think you just needed us to herd the Warrior back to its Vault."

The Watcher paused then, twitching an irritable air towards Jack.

"He already made a mess of our system, destroying one piece and causing others to follow suit.._.Vault Hunters_...a new name. People used to come to the Vaults, but rarely did they kill the guardians. Of late...it has happened more often. A problem. No guardian, the Vault dies...but usually, the hunter is still within the Vault when this happens. The door locks. They can replace what they destroyed. Everything has its place...or must be replaced. For balance. For peace. Isn't that what your sires teach you? If you break something that belongs to someone else...ought you not replace it?"

Rhys could almost hear _laughter _threading the end of the Watcher's words. But before he could ask more, the creature had teleported away with the parting words. "You still have a job to do, Siren. Bring the Warrior back to its Vault...and do not worry about his debt to the Eridians. Worry about your own."

* * *

They had dragged themselves to shelter in a cave again for the night, a small fire thrown together with what little energy Jack had left to find enough firewood in the dead forest and chuck together. Now, the man was lying flat on his back upon the ground, breathing heavily against his injuries. Rhys had tended to them as best as possible with what little they had, but in truth, he wasn't sure if he was making things better or worse.

"Woah...that's gotta hurt," Rhys commented, picking up one of Jack's hands with a feather-touch and turning it over to expose the palm. He could feel Jack tense as he did so, though whether it was from pain or shock was anyone's guess.

"Turns out? Lava monster that erupted out of lava and stomps around leaving big-ass lava footprints everywhere? Definitely one to wear your oven mitts for before trying to climb," Jack mumbled, opening one eye blearily. "Stings like a bitch."

Rhys leaned down a little, looking at the burns littering the man's palms. They were red raw and peeling in places, but was worried him the most was the same strange blue scarring that was rippled beneath the angry red burns.

"The same as your face..." he muttered to himself. Or, he thought he had.

"Yo, what the _fuck _is that meant to mean, the same as my face?" Jack growled, yanking his hand out of Rhys' grip. "My _face_ isn't _crispy_, ya leaky nipple."

"I—what did you just call me? I mean, that was pretty weak by your standards."

"The hour is late," Jack replied in a false-posh tone, "and mine wit is dryeth. Shut thee up and let Jackie sleep. Forsooth."

With that, Jack let his hand flop back down to the ground and he closed both eyes again. Rhys couldn't help but give him a small smile. A little while ago, such a misunderstanding would have seen Jack leap up to try and throttle him. Now, it was a weirdly-barbed insult. Small progress was huge progress when it came to Handsome Jack changing _anything_ about his attitude towards people.

_Changing…_

The word remained in Rhys' head long after the idle thought had left. Something about Jack and changing had been tugging on his mind. He turned his attention to the dwindling campfire, the Watcher's words echoing in his memory:

"_You are...needed. To replace what you destroyed...Everything has its place...or must be replaced."_

The creature had been looking at Jack the whole time. What exactly was he supposed to replace? What had he broken that the Watcher wanted replacing so badly anyway? Initially, Rhys had assumed the being simply meant Jack's part in the Warrior's escape. But now? Now he wasn't so sure.

What he was sure of, however, was his crippling exhaustion. A yawn reached up all the way through Rhys' aching body, stretching his arms up high and opening his jaw out fully until he settled down to curl up near Jack. The man had left his coat on the floor next to him, a silent understanding they'd both gained that this meant Rhys could take it to use as a blanket for the night. This occurred every night.

As he snuggled down under the heavy warmth of the coat, Rhys gave one last look to the slumbering man next to him, letting his Siren's eyes flicker over him enough to see Jack's shattered psyche floating in a broken disc around his head once again. The act sapped the last of his strength and, eyelids growing heavier in each breath, Rhys fell into a deep sleep...

* * *

...But not deep enough that Jack's foot couldn't wake him with a sharp kick to the shin.

"Meerrr?! Ow! What the...urgh, seriously?" Rhys babbled out, waking up with little grace and frowning over at Jack. It took him a moment to register that Jack himself was still asleep, his eyes adjusting rapidly to the night. He could see Jack lying a little closer to him than when they had both fallen asleep, having evidently twisted and trashed enough in his sleep to pull himself near. Jack was clearly not having a restful sleep — his limbs twitched and jerked without warning, fending off some unseen assailant. Rhys realised now that he'd been kicked by mistake as Jack battled something in his bad dream. Every so often, Jack's lips fluttered and he muttered something rapidly under his breath, but Rhys couldn't make out what.

Shifting his weight up to his arm as he sat up, Rhys watched the man for a while, wondering if he should risk waking him up. Without prompt, his sight heightened once more, revealing Jack's dream before Rhys' eyes like some strange shadow play.

A bandit holding a girl by the arm, blue tattoos glowing white as she screamed out to her fearful parents. It took Rhys a moment to realise that this little girl was Angel, and that the man pleading with the bandit was Jack himself.

_Is this...why Jack hates bandits so much? _Rhys wondered to himself.

He could only watch as Angel's powers then lashed out in response to her emotions. Uncontrolled. Unintended. A turret sprang to life, under her thrown out frustration that she couldn't _fight _back against her kidnapper. _Fight_. _Fight_. The turret rattled. Bullets sprayed across the room, the bandit dropping to the ground, dead...

Angel's mother...shoved Jack to the ground, to safety, shielding him with herself. Bullets rained upon her back, her neck, her head…

Rhys' mouth opened, but it was Jack's voice that cried out feebly next to him.

"No...! Angel, what...did you do…?"

He wanted to look away, but he couldn't tear his eyes from the shadow-theatre. Dream-Jack's grief tore out of him, almost as uncontrolled as Angel's own outburst. Angel's words tumbled through Rhys' memory as he recalled her warning of Jack's illness: _But Jack? He doesn't have any skin between his emotional nerves and the outside world.._

Rhys could _see _his fury, his knee-jerk reaction of momentary _hatred _towards his own daughter…and then, almost as suddenly as it had happened, it evaporated. Jack was terrifyingly calm, holding the body of his dead wife, face utterly blank. Angel walked forward, shaking from head to foot as she stared at her fallen mother...an arm outstretched to her father's back, a silent plea for him to tell her everything would be alright.

_Sometimes...he just can't process it. He shuts down. _

Rhys wished Jack had turned around and hugged his petrified daughter, assured her this wasn't her fault, it was an accident, and awful, terrible accident, that she wasn't to blame.

But he didn't.

The dream played on, Jack turning to look at Angel with _nothing _in his eyes. Somehow, it was far more devastating than hatred, far more cold than fear.

The pieces of the dream swirled away, draining like inks through water until, finally, calm settled around them. The bad dream had passed, and Jack relaxed once more, leaving Rhys to sit there in shock of what he'd seen.

Absently, a hand reached out to shake Jack awake, but he paused. He wanted to talk to Jack, to process what the hell he'd just seen...or did he? Was he...really the Jack he wanted to confide in? In truth, Rhys had opened up to Jack a little as the other man had to him. But to AI Jack, well, Rhys had all but unravelled his hopes and dreams to him, and the AI had confessed several personal thoughts and feelings of his own. Sometimes he forgot that his connection with the AI was separate from the real Jack. Maybe that was why the man looked a little confused from time to time whenever Rhys addressed him with just a little more knowingness than he ought to have had at this point.

He wasn't sure what made him feel guiltier — picking up the Jackhammer so he could talk to AI Jack over the real guy, or the fact that Rhys now realised just how much he'd sort of neglected the digital clone in favour of the real Jack.

_Wait, why do I feel guilty?_ He thought. _AI Jack tried to kill me. And shove a metal skeleton in me. Nakayama's coding or not, he still tried… _

"Psst...you er...you awake?" Rhys whispered to the Jackhammer, shuffling over to the far corner of the cave so as not to wake Jack.

"Of course I'm awake, moron. I'm _code_. I don't _need _to sleep," AI Jack grumbled, flickering to life in front of Rhys. His arms were folded, his face scrunched up with irritation, but what really made Rhys jump back in shock was AI Jack's appearance. His wide eyes tipped the AI off as he stopped looking annoyed for a second and looked down at himself. "Oh, this? Just, y'know...tryin' to find my own identity a little. Peelin' away from the ol' existential crisis that is _Oh-God-I'm-Not-Really-Really-Jack_. S'difficult, 'cause, well, my whole code is replicating that guy...and I think like him and...but whatever, what do you think? Better?"

Rhys blinked. AI Jack had changed his entire look. He wasn't wearing a mask any more, but his face wasn't scarred either. Unless you counted a rubbish soul patch as a facial scar. He'd lost the long shirt and waistcoat, opting instead for a simple jacket and the Hyperion-branded shirt that had stayed with Jack his entire life.

"Wait...I've just seen this. This is...Jack-in-his-thirties style?" Rhys asked, eyebrow arched. The AI mimicked his look.

"Waddya mean, you _just_ saw this? Oh hey, you want a heart-to-heart? With me? What about _really-real _me, what, thought you two were getting on like a skag on fire?"

"We're not—skags don't—wait, are you...are you_ jealous_?"

"_Pssh,_ no_. No._ Nooooo," AI Jack crooned, holding his hands out and floating away from Rhys a little. "You suck. Totally suck. Our friendship ended when Helios crashed, right? Didn't it? Thought it did. Didn't it? Are you saying it didn't? 'Cause like, I don't care, but if you're apologising then_ maaaybe_ we can rekindle the connection, Rhysie, but like, no no, I don't care. Me. _You_ might care. Do you? Care? About our friendship that is. Obviously, who wouldn't wanna be friends with me? Handsome Ja — Handsome Sorta-Jack."

Rhys gave the AI a wry smile. It was curious — in some ways, though they were their own individual beings, what he learned from Jack emboldened Rhys' nerve against AI Jack, and vice-versa. The more he learned about one helped him steel himself against the other's onslaught of less-than-subtle emotions and composure.

"I _think _our friendship ended when you _tried to kill me_," Rhys pointed out, then shrugged. "Willing to let the whole metal-skeleton thing slide to blame Nakayama coding that command. The rest is on you though."

"Helios _dropping out of the freaking sky_ is not on me!"

"I'm sorry, Jack."

"'Cause that is _on you_, Rh—" AI Jack stalled. He froze. Rhys was sure he glitched. There is was; blindsiding Jack. Worked on them both. For one, it was out-heroing him. Now, it was out-_everything_-ing him. "Wait, what?"

"Said I'm sorry. Being the bigger man, taking responsibility. You're right. I crashed Helios. I'm sorry."

"...Whatever, you're just sayin' that 'cause you miss me."

"I do. A little. When you're not a raging psychopath, you're actually kinda dope," Rhys admitted. "Just a shame it has to be one or the other with you. Dope or...psychotic. You were a good friend, till you weren't."

"I...guess...I might have...freaked out too hard," the AI hedged, sounding as though every word was being dragged out of him without his say-so. He looked visibly _furious _at himself for speaking. "Not used to...trusting someone. Kinda used to...getting betrayed. Or, or I _thought _I was. I guess that's _his _experience I'm talkin' about. Actin' on. God, he's a fricking _jerk_, right? Why'd I have to be made to copy this blazing trash fire?" He lamented, gesturing to the sleeping Jack in frustration. "I coulda—I dunno, had a...a_ friend_ or somethin' stupid like that. Made something of myself instead of acting like_ him_ without realising that wasn't...didn't have to be...argh, I dunno! Shut up! You're making me weird again!" The AI snapped, rounding on Rhys. "Why'd you wanna talk, huh?"

Rhys looked away for a moment, then back at the AI.

"Guess I needed a friend."

AI Jack's eyes went wide, his lips parting a little in shock. Rhys' hand came up to nervously toy with the hair on the back of his head. "I er...wanted to talk to someone about...I just saw a dream of Jack's and...I don't really know how I feel about it. Coulda used a familiar face. Kinda...sad that you changed it."

Silence settled over the strange, damaged duo then.

AI Jack disappeared without a word. Rhys' eyes widened, his heart twisted, and his anger almost sparked — that _asshole! _After he'd taken the first step and apologised first, _despite _everything AI Jack had done to him, all the hurt, all the anger, all he had to do was reach out to the hand Rhys had extended, one the AI arguably didn't deserve, and—

The AI's form returned, now dressed as Hyperion's CEO, mask in place, eyes firmly fixed at Rhys' feet. Was that...embarrassment Rhys saw on the AI's face?

"I wasn't feeling the whole soul-patch look anyway."


	13. Chapter 13

With the Warrior escaping their grasp once more, the frustrated group had resigned themselves to setting up camp once again. Rhys found that he had grown no more accustom to sleeping outside on the umpteenth night than he had on the first night he'd become stranded on Pandora. Not like Vaughn. Vaughn had adapted to it surprisingly quick.

The man's thoughts flitted away to consider the friends he'd left behind upon opening the Vault of the Traveler. Sasha...Vaughn...Loader Bot...Gortys...were his friends looking for him and Fiona? Had the Traveler's Vault remained anchored? The guardian had been defeated, but was it dead? Had the doors sealed behind them as the guardian succumbed to its injuries? If Rhys had hoped to find comfort in his memories, he had made an error in judgment. There were just as many questions waiting for him back with them as there were on this new adventure with Jack.

Part of Rhys felt guilty for continuing. Sure, the Warrior was a pretty pressing concern — if it managed to break out of the Vault system, it was_ designed_ to wipe out threats to Pandora, right? No doubt the creature would agree with Jack that bandits were a threat to the planet, at least.

And yet, despite this oncoming apocalypse crashing towards Pandora, Rhys couldn't shake the feeling that he was letting his real friends down here. He had assumed Fiona had been spirited away by the Vault's strange treasure chest, but to where, Rhys couldn't say. He should be looking for her, not trooping after Jack as they tracked the Warrior's scorching path.

_Looking...I mean...that's sort of my thing now, right? _He thought to himself, glancing down at his hand and turning his palm over to look at the blue markings. They stretched further than he remembered, coiling down the back of his hand and over his fingers.

"Don't worry. It's normal. Or, Siren-normal at least," Angel said, popping up besides Rhys. He couldn't help but jump a little. He wasn't sure he'd ever get used to these digital phantoms.

"Oh! Er...yeah? That's good...I mean, normal and I don't seem to get along these days," Rhys chuckled, looking nervously at Jack and trying to keep his voice low. "They won't...go up my face, will they?"

Angel rolled her eyes.

"Wow, you really _are _Hyperion at heart. But I don't know. Every Siren is a little different. But your markings changing isn't something to worry about. Mine were blue to start with, but they turned white as my powers grew stronger. Or...maybe it was the eridium..."

Rhys watched as the woman turned a sour look towards the back of Jack's head. It occurred to him that, out of everyone at Hyperion, its CEO was strangely lacking augmentations. Though Hyperion had crafted so many cutting-edge technologies that would have made the man faster, stronger, shielded and, well, more powerful...Jack hadn't chosen to undergo any sort of cybernetic enhancement. Everything was external. For example, his cloaking device was clipped to his jacket when it could have been better crafted into his skin. Hyperion had the technology.

Even Jack's mask was sculpted and clipped on, though digital masking technologies existed for a more seamless look. Hell, most of Jack's doppelgängers used that exact digital 'glamour' technology to masquerade as the man. Some, of course, opted for the more permanent surgery to look like the man, and were paid way more for their trouble. But the digital alternative was sported by a number of 'Jacks' on Opportunity in particular. In a way, it was strange that Handsome Jack himself seemed to adverse to cybernetic augmentation.

Or, at least, it had been.

Now, Rhys understood why. Jack was afraid of Angel. He was afraid his daughter could use her powers to bring him down. To kill him. Technology was her domain, and through a combination of caging her and keeping himself as unaugmented as possible, Jack kept any digital daggers he feared locked away in his paranoia alone.

Though, looking at Angel's expression and considering everything he'd seen, Rhys wasn't so convinced the woman would have used her powers to short-circuit any technological implants Jack might have chosen to get.

"You...don't hate Jack as much as you want to," Rhys pointed out under his breath, feeling his heart hammer in response to the deeply personal intrusion he was making. Angel's head whipped from glaring at Jack to look at Rhys in shock. "W-well...you have every right to, don't get me wrong, but...but you_ don't_. That's what you're really mad about, isn't it? You _want _to hate him. But you can't."

"N-no...I helped Vault Hunters get close to him. I _told _them to promise me that they'd kill him," Angel protested.

"Sure. And after your body died and you uploaded yourself to the Hyperion network, you were freer than you'd ever been. You coulda gone to a digistruct, made yourself a new body, downloaded yourself to it, had a new badass-robot-body life...but you didn't. You could have gone _anywhere _the Hyperion network. But you chose Jack's cloaking device. Knowing he was going to a Vault, a digital deadzone, and you'd probably get stuck there if your friends succeeded. Why do that?"

Angel turned her attention back to Jack, eyes narrowing on the back of his head again as the man continued to lead them across the Vault. For a moment, Rhys worried that maybe Jack _did _have a digital implant after all, and that any second now Angel's Siren powers would manifest in some horrific skull-splattering form.

"I..." she started to say. Rhys was vaguely aware of AI Jack glimmering to view nearby, a short distance from Angel. Had he been listening the whole time? Then, Angel's jaw set resolutely and she nodded a little to herself. "I wanted to see him die. That was why I stored myself in Jack's cloaking device before he entered the Vault. I knew I wouldn't be able to see inside the Vault otherwise, not from the Hyperion network. Like you said, inside the Vaults are a digital deadzone. I wanted to see him die."

"...Because of what he did to you?"

Surprisingly, Angel shook her head.

"Not exactly...partly? I...I guess in some ways, I initially understood why I was locked in the Core. My powers...they're unstable. I understand that. If I lose control of them, and-and I do...sometimes...they can kill. But Jack betrayed me the day he stopped looking for a way for me to live safely outside the Core, like he _promised_ he would. He betrayed me the day he started using me as a weapon, as a catalyst, as a _machine_...but...but that wasn't why I wanted to see him die.

"I wanted to see the monster die. Before my father went to Elpis, he'd visit me in the Core. We'd work together on schematics, design prototypes for things that might help keep my powers in check and let me go safely outside. We opened the Vault that Atlas were after on Pandora...he told me the eridium that would come out of the Vault would help get me out of the Core. That it was a powerful element that could power a device strong enough to match and contain my power. I was so excited! I...I helped him. I tricked the Vault Hunters into opening the Vault of the Destroyer, and eridium poured out over Pandora. But then Jack went to Elpis...and..."

Angel's voice became strangled and she looked sharply away. In an instant, AI Jack's barely-there ghost disappeared.

"...and a _monster _came back. My father used to be a good man, Rhys. Arrogant, yes...reckless...flawed...but not selfish. Not _murderous_. Jack would do anything to keep me and Mom happy. God, sometimes, he'd do something so stupidly over-the-top, l-like buy me ten stuffed toys o-o-or make a reservation at a restaurant he totally couldn't afford. It was like he was _scared _we weren't happy. You know, he proposed to Mom with an _eridium _ring? Back then, before the Vault was opened, eridium was like _stardust_. I still don't know how he got hold of it!" Angel half-laughed around tears, happy memories making the sad ones stand out all the more in her eyes. "B-but that's why he stayed at Hyperion, even though his boss used to make his life hell. Jack'd come home every day looking like he'd been to war. But he'd smile when he saw me. When he saw Mom. He...after Mom died, the smiles were a little sadder, b-but they came back. Then they disappeared again after he came back from Elpis. My father died in that Vault on Elpis, Rhys...and a monster came out. A vain, selfish, arrogant, violent _monster_! And I...I...hoped that that monster would die in the Vault of the Warrior a-and maybe...maybe...Dad would come back out?"

Angel's last utterance trailed away as a question, a hiccup of sobs and a twist of a hollow laugh. "It's dumb, isn't it? I mean, he's...he's still the same guy. He just turned into a total _asshole_. I guess it was easier to think it wasn't his fault, that it wasn't real, that the Vault was to blame but...but he just saw more power in the Vaults and...and he became all that. Greedy, selfish, power-hungry...he chose that. He chose to change from a good man into..._Handsome Jack_, right?"

Rhys wasn't sure what to say. He couldn't even meet Angel's eyes, keeping his gaze trained on the floor as he tried to focus on just keeping one foot in front of the other.

"But...but he didn't die," Rhys eventually spoke. "In the Vault. Are you gonna...y'know...try again? 'Cause I mean...back then, with the Warrior the other day," Angel turned to face Rhys, and for a moment, he didn't want to tell her what he had saw. "W-well, y'know...Siren thing. I can see...stuff. A-and I saw you kinda...reach out? When he lost his grip on the Warrior. You were...worried. He coulda died."

The woman looked insulted, and he wouldn't have been surprised if Angel disappeared at that moment. Instead, she gave a sad smile.

"That's the worst part of it all," she explained. "I wish he were dead because of all the bad memories...but he still _looks _like all the good memories too. Jack isn't my father any more...but he _was_. And he was a good one once too. That's...the worst part."

Rhys found himself smiling sadly, turning to look over at their limping leader. They'd managed to patch him up a bit with the medical supplies Angel had digistructed for them, but there was nothing to heal a broken rib or two other than time. And rest. Neither of which Jack seemed particularly interested in giving to his injuries. The idea of being some chosen hero for the Eridians had given the man an impressive drive to get the job done. This would have been admirable, had this motivation not worked twice as well as a simple "everyone could die if we don't stop this thing".

"The worst," Rhys agreed, realising too late he had spoken quite loudly, catching Jack's attention. Jack glanced over his shoulder, eyebrow raised.

"What is?"

"Oh, err..." Rhys stammered, noticing Angel disappear in an instant. "Just-just er, the Warrior. He's goin' straight to that snow Vault again. Haha, it was…it was cold. Real cold. The worst, haha...ha..."

Jack didn't reply immediately, and for a long second Rhys felt as though he'd seen right through him. Sure, it wasn't a total lie — Rhys _could _see where the Warrior was going, the walls between the Vaults no more an obstacle to his newfound sight powers than they were to the Warrior's fury. And the Warrior _was _going to the snow Vault for round two with its guardian.

"Next time you gallivant off tryin' to be me," Jack said, taking his jacket off and throwing it at Rhys again. "Bring a frigging jacket, cupcake. Adventurer 101. Coat, comfy shoes, big gun. Got it?"

"Got it. Thanks..." Rhys replied, pulling the jacket on before the pair began to head towards the gaping hole in the Vault that the Warrior had smashed through ahead of them.

"God, this _sucks_," Jack complained, arms wrapped around his torso as they walked from the muggy air of the dead forest Vault and into the frigid, biting air of the snow Vault again. "That dumb alien didn't even give us anything to capture the thing with! And we are _not _risking Angel again!"

Jack was right, and it was something that had been bothering Rhys for a while. For a creature that wanted the Warrior returned to its Vault so badly, the Watcher had really given them nothing to go on, and less in the means of help.

"Maybe _you _shouldn't be the bait this time," Rhys offered with a shrug. "I mean...you can't outrun it."

"Oh really? I hadn't noticed. 'Cept when it tried to turn me into the best-looking _pancake _this solar system has ever seen, and you were standing on the sidelines doing _dick all_. What else you got hiding there, pumpkin, what, you gonna drop on me _now _that you're a professional long-runner in your spare time?" Jack ranted, then gestured down at Rhys' legs. "I mean, even with those staggering pins of yours, I don't think you're gonna be able to outrun this thing either. Y'know, I bet you're the kinda guy who _zig-zags _when they run..."

"Who's running, pal?" Rhys smirked. AI Jack flickered into view next to Jack, facing Rhys with a distinct look of horror. Rhys looked the AI dead in the eye and said: "_I _can _fly_."

Both Jack and the AI blinked in unison.

"Holy crap. You've done it," Jack said, eyes wide. The sincerity in his voice made Rhys' brain stall for a moment, as well as a sense of panic rise in his chest.

"Wh-what?"

"Yeah no, you totally did it, Rhysie. Congrats, high-five, champagne, you've...you've _impressed _me. What you just said was _impressive_."

"I—errr, you think?" Rhys half-laughed, a hand coming up to the back of his head nervously. Of course echoing something AI Jack had said would be what finally made him look_ cool_ in the eyes of Handsome Jack.

"Yeah, Prince Charming. I am_ impressed_ how you can take a cool-sounding one-liner and just...just completely turn it into an awkward disaster!" Jack grinned, cuffing the man in the upper arm. "Seriously, that's talent._ Who's running, pal? I can fly!_ Like, it_ should_ work! On every level! And yet, outta your yapper? 100 percent awkward and weird! Gahahaha! Haaa, honestly, it's like, it's like watchin' a kitten try to roar or something — priceless!"

Rhys' bottom lip stuck out, his arms folded, and his eyes narrowed at Jack as the other man laughed. He hoped his cracked rib was giving him grief at least. "Aw, hey, don't! Don't do that!" Jack protested, pointing at Rhys' face. "That! That is..._not_ threatening, pumpkin, it's...gahahaha! Aw, you're..._man_, you used to work for me? What a missed freaking opportunity, hours of fun totally missed my radar there! I coulda taught you how to be_ cool_, like, could you imagine?"

As Jack fell about laughing again, wincing and wheezing over his injuries, Rhys mused over what he wanted to say.

There was a truth bomb brewing on the tip of his tongue. He could end this whole tirade of laughter in five words. He knew it. He could shoot this man right down, right where it hurt, thanks to all the time Rhys had spent getting to know his AI counterpart.

Handsome Jack had underestimated Rhys Strongfork's...Jack-expertise. His _Jaxpertise._

So, Rhys held his head up. He put on a smirk, even though his heart was screaming with anxiety (hell, he'd learnt how to hide that ages ago at Hyperion. Anxiety was like a drop of blood among sharks there). He walked right by the laughing Jack, glancing only once as he said:

"You're not cool, _old man_."

* * *

Somehow, wordlessly, they'd agreed to set up camp for the night. The snow had stopped falling some time ago, and the air had only grown colder for its absence. Having spent some time looking out across the Vault, Rhys had come to the conclusion that the Vault's guardian had been killed by the Warrior. He'd drawn this conclusion from his Siren powers happily showing him the guardian's mangled and burnt corpse _leagues _from their current location. They'd failed to close the gap between the Warrior and themselves, and their entire mission felt like an exercise in pointlessness.

He'd returned to their sheltered camp to find Jack already pretending to be asleep. The man had sulked ever since Rhys had opted to cut him down, and what a display of pettiness it had been. He hadn't even spoken to Rhys to ask for his jacket back and, much to Rhys' gratitude, their guns had been digistructed away by Angel.

So at least Jack couldn't shoot him for his insult.

Sitting down by the dwindling fire, Rhys found himself considering that risk. Killing was a part of life on Pandora, hell, it was the closest thing the planet had to law and order. Which was...horrific to say the least. Companies like Hyperion had always appealed to the less-bloodthirsty as a means to get away from the cut-throat society of Pandora. Sure, there were other planets to consider, but space travel wasn't cheap.

And, well...you didn't find out the companies were as violent as the bandits below until _after _you'd signed on the dotted line.

Curling up under the blanket of Jack's coat, Rhys began to drift off to sleep still thinking about the steps that had lead him to Hyperion…

...

..._Strongfork Enterprises. He'd told his dad that was a rubbish name for a company, and it was one of the few times Rhys had seen his father look genuinely hurt. _

"_Why? That's **our **name, Rhys!" His father had said. "A name to be proud of! And gods, the world needs a company people can be proud to work for." _

"_Yeah but...I mean, **I work for Atlas** or **I'm an employee at Hyperion**_ _sounds cooler than **I work at Strongfork**_**,**_" Rhys half-smiled. "I'm just saying, it...it doesn't have to literally be our name."_

"_Pssh, I'm not naming it after a **god**. That's half the problem — these men all think they're gods, not workers!" _

_Strongfork Enterprises lasted two years, four months, and twenty-four days. Rhys remembered this fact for two reasons. _

_One, those two years, four months, and twenty-four days had been the most difficult, yet proudest of his life. He'd worked with his father to build this fledgling company up from nothing. _

_Two, he'd watched as Atlas, the greatest power in the galaxy at the time...crushed it. In just thirty minutes, some high-flying Atlas exec picked Strongfork Enterprises as their amusement for the morning, and crashed everything into the ground. Stocks fell. Value haemorrhaged. Suppliers went silent. Customers evaporated. Employees fled. Rhys watched his father's dream break in his eyes, dulling them of all spark and motivation for what would be the rest of his father's life. _

_Crushed under the thumb of a god. _

_Under Atlas. _

_There was only one company that could hope to bring Atlas down. It was a no-brainer. If Rhys wanted to see Atlas fall, if he wanted revenge for what they had done to his father and his company, he had to join the winning side. The only contender to Atlas' crown. _

_Hyperion. _

_But gods, the look in his father's eyes as he proudly told him he'd nailed the interview. That as of today, Rhys Strongfork was an employee at Hyperion. _

_He'd thought it was sadness. _

_In hindsight, he realised...it was** disappointment** and** fear** and** horror** and—_

Rhys woke with a start and a sharp intake of breath. As far as nightmares went, this one was technically not the worst. Not by a long shot. Not after seeing the delights of a Skin Pizza Party. But it still turned his stomach into a cold knot of lead far quicker.

Because it was far too_ real_. Too personal. Everything he'd tried to forget of letting down his family's name.

And that brief, sharp sting of wanting_ revenge_. Sure, it had fallen into the background as Rhys had realised his focus each day had to be to_ survive_ and climb the ranks in Hyperion. He could never take down Atlas as a middle manager after all. And as the years had gone by, his fire to enact revenge dulled.

He remember the day Hyperion had announced that Atlas had fallen. That the company was all but liquidated, thanks to a band of Vault Hunters, a huge debt to the Crimson Lance, and Handsome Jack buying up every share with pocket change.

That was the day Rhys had_ really_ become enamoured with Handsome Jack. Sure, he'd been something of a fanboy before that, Rhys couldn't deny it. But that day? That day, Jack had been_ his_ hero. He'd brought down Atlas. He'd enacted Rhys' revenge for him, inadvertently.

So yeah, Rhys understood, he supposed. He understood why Jack might want revenge on bandits as a whole, knowing now what he did of Jack's wife. Of the bandit that had caused the string of events leading to her death, to the rift between his daughter and himself. On a flat and basic level, the want for revenge was not an alien concept to Rhys.

But he knew something Jack didn't know.

The horrible truth.

Watching Atlas fall...did absolutely nothing. Rhys' life did not suddenly get better. His father did not suddenly start smiling again. In fact, despite years of effort poured into hating Atlas, working against them, crowing about Hyperion's superiority, and conspiring for their fall...when the big day arrived...Rhys life continued as it always had.

Absolutely nothing changed.

Rhys turned to look at Jack in the gloom. The man had rolled over, a little closer to Rhys now than when they had fallen asleep. One man had wronged Jack, and it had sent him on a wild spree of revenge against all bandits.

The things Jack had done to achieve this had been, for want of a better word, insane. Complex, convoluted plans, ridiculous risks, utter recklessness, his own family — everything was expendable for Jack to try and get complete power, and a perfect revenge.

Rhys couldn't help but wonder...the Vaults...seeing those ghosts being led in by the Eridans, the guardian tearing people apart...like a slaughterhouse...they'd always thought of the Eridans as a higher power, a greater being.

Then again, he'd thought Handsome Jack was a perfect hero.

They'd thought the Warrior was a defender of Pandora.

What if the stories had polished the Eridians as much as they had to Handsome Jack and the Warrior? What if the truth was...worse?

He sighed, looking just above Jack's head. Slowly, Rhys' eyes adjusted and showed the splintered fragments of Jack's psyche-halo once again. Absently, Rhys wondered why the main fracture was in the shape of the Vault symbol — could it be a coincidence? As though to answer him, Rhys began to see what Jack was dreaming of playing out over his head:

"_Wait...what? That's it? That...little thing. The hell did…"_

_A younger-looking Jack walked across a tiny, empty Vault. He was speaking to...Athena? Was that why the AI had wanted to keep his existence a secret, Rhys wondered. Jack's attention was pulled away before Athena could answer — he was looking at a strange, floating relic at the centre of the Vault. He didn't even pause; Jack was already striding over to the thing, hand outstretched. _

"_Ohh...what kinda weapon..."_

_Who does that? Rhys thought as he watched. That could literally be anything, Jack! What are you—?_

_Jack's hand touched the relic, and immediately, a brilliant purple light blistered from his eyes. Behind him, a crystalline structure grew from the ground, a bizarre throne to seat the blinded man._

"_Ohhh my...GOD!" Jack exclaimed, his voice threaded not with fear, but excitement. Rhys turned to look **through **Jack's eyes as the man yelled: "I GET IT! I understand! I understand EVERYTHING! Hahahahahaha!"_

_Rhys nearly recoiled away as he tried to look at the same vision Jack was receiving: bright splintered of time and space, the future and the past all mashed into one. The Warrior, created by the Eridians, lava, the location of its Vault. Jack, bloodied, shoving the Vault key into the ground, a Siren lying nearby. Wings, a Siren, eriridium pouring from her veins. A map of Vaults **all **across the galaxy. Fire. Bandits. Pandora. But worse yet, Rhys could **see **the violet tendrils of the relic snaking through Jack's eyes, coiling around his mind, weaving itself a connection directly to his psyche. It was already fragile, Rhys could see that, though not as thoroughly broken as he had seen in the present day. Here, it was cracked with grief, betrayal, pain; a mess, but not completely broken._

"_Heya, handsome."_

_Rhys looked up to see a red-haired woman approaching. He'd seen her before, he was sure, on Hyperion's long list of wanted Vault Hunters. A Siren. Dangerous. _

_She started forward, first reeled back, even as Rhys reached out in vain and yelled:_

"_No, stop!"_

_But he was nothing but a spectator to the past. The Siren's fist shattered the relic, still attached though it was to Jack's mind. All the tendrils of the Vault relic, still connected to his mind when the Siren had destroyed it, had broken the man's psyche in turn.__The Vault's symbol within the relic burned with the Siren's power, scorching the man's face and branding him. Jack was thrown to the ground, hands grasping at his burning face and eyes. Meanwhile the Siren simply teleported away, leaving Jack on the floor, cursing. _

"_Rrrrrrhrgh! Son of a..."_

_True, the physical damage was a shock on its own, but Rhys found himself mesmerised by the psyche-halo he could see around Jack's head. Every splinter of the relic was reflected in Jack's mind now too, and the effect was instantaneous. A **monster **began to growl: _

"_I'm gonna KILL her. I'm gonna kill them ALL!" __Jack declared, dragging himself to his feet. He pointed sharply to the side. "__First, you're gonna find me a doctor. Then we're gonna wipe those bandit bastards off the face of Pandora!" __The wounded man sat himself back down in the crystal throne, strangely unbothered by the blistering wound that cut through his face beyond asking for a doctor…for a man as vain as Jack, it was strange to see. "__And then...Then we're gonna wake the Warrior. It's gonna be so good. We're gonna scorch the freakin' planet in fire. There's gonna be screaming...bandits are gonna die left and right...I can't wait! Hahahahahah!"_

_The scene bled away, crumbling at the edges, as Rhys noticed too— _

—late that Jack had woken up.

"I," Rhys tried to speak, feeling suddenly aware of how intrusive it was to watch another man's dream. He thought about playing it off as him just not being able to sleep — after all, Jack didn't know he could see dreams, right? "I'm...sorry." Well, if he didn't know, he probably did now.

Oddly, Jack didn't seem annoyed. Instead, he settled back down, turning his back to Rhys.

"S'probably good. You get it now. I was tryna save Pandora. See? Wasn't lying about it."

"What...no, Jack, that doesn't..." Rhys stammered, shaking his head to try and clear his thoughts as well as in response to Jack's weird logic. "Bandits dying left and right? That's...no! If you were gonna save Pandora, you'd have saved the bandits who went crazy! O-or saved the people living there among them! Not tried to kill them all! Scorching the planet in fire, I mean...that's not just gonna kill bandits, Jack! If that's a hero, Pandora doesn't need one!"

What Jack said next shocked Rhys to his core.

"...You're right."

"No, because—! Wait, what?"

"I said_ you're right_. Pandora doesn't need a hero. Nah...Pandora doesn't_ deserve_ one. Pandora_ deserves_ to be wiped out, Rhys. Honestly? We should just let the Warrior go on its rampage."

For every step forward, there were several steps back. It was as though Jack was determined to show Rhys all the worst of him. Or...maybe that was all that was left of him, and Rhys was the idiot for expecting anything more, especially at this point.

Beside him, the dull blue glow of AI Jack glimmered into view.

"So...still think he's the better Jack?"


	14. Chapter 14

**AN: Please forgive me for two things. One, that this update took three weeks (life has been a little brutal lately). Two, that there may be some sneaky typos that get through my proofreading here, as I wrote this at daft o' clock after having already spending the previous seven hours writing another project. I do hope you enjoy this all the same, and if you could leave a review, that would be much appreciated. **

* * *

He'd lost count of how long they had been trekking through Vaults. Long enough that it just felt like a way of life for Rhys now. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was karma finally catching up and planting her boot squarely between his butt cheeks for all those unsavoury deals on Hyperion. All those poor schmucks he got fired on his way to the top.

It occurred to Rhys that if _he _was getting bored and disillusioned with this situation, then Jack would almost certainly be —

It was at that exact moment that Rhys realised something was very, very wrong.

_He _was leading the way. Handsome Jack was not walking in front of him. In any other situation involving any other person, this would mean that said walking companion would be walking behind him.

But Handsome Jack was not any other person. He didn't walk behind _anyone_.

Spinning around with such gusto that he twisted his ankle and narrowly avoided crashing to the ground, Rhys' eyes darted left and right over the grassy field they'd been trudging over.

"Jack?!" He yelped — he told himself he was only worried because the guy was his main gunslinger against any of the horrors the Vaults might throw at them. "H-hey, Jack?!"

"Stopped walkin' about a mile back," AI Jack appeared in front of Rhys, making the man jump. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to emphasise the point, then shrugged. "Something about _this suuuuucks _and _we're never gonna catch uuuuup_. To be honest, between you and me? Sort of agree with him on this one."

"Oh, for the love of...why, _why _didn't he just say something?" Rhys complained.

"Well he did," AI Jack pointed out. "He literally said _we're never gonna catch uuuuup_."

"No I—goddammit, okay, guess we're backtracking for this fricking diva!" The CEO threw his hands up in the air in exasperation, before stomping through the AI and back the way he'd came. After about twenty minutes of furious power-walking, Rhys finally found the man lying flat on his back. He might have been worried that Jack's heart had decided enough was enough and packed in for good, had Jack not been lying there with his arms firmly crossed over his chest, sulking horizontally.

"Seriously?" Rhys greeted him, peering down at the other.

"Yeah," Jack replied, not moving a muscle. "_Seriously_. This is dumb. This whole thing is dumb. The Vault is dumb, the Warrior is dumb, the stupid alien Dum-Dum is dumb—"

"Wow, they never highlight the fact you're a poet alongside your long list of achievements..."

"—and this whole thing is_ dumb_. We're not gonna catch it. And y'know what? So what if we don't?!"

"Jack, we've gone over this...we can't risk the Warrior getting out of the Vault system. It'll_ destroy everything_."

"Nah nah nah, it'll_ kill_ everything. 'Cause that what I said. I said_ kill_. And y'wanna know how many people I care about on Pandora? Hm? Go on, ask me."

Rhys sighed, sitting himself down. These sorts of conversations weren't short ones when it came to Jack. No doubt they're run in verbal circles for a while.

"...That's not the point, Jack."

"Well, maybe it is! Think about it. Vaults_ allll_ over the fricking universe. People got lured in, killed by the Guardians, right? But the last few years? We've been going in and kicking these Vault monsters' butts!"

Rhys had tuned out a little from Jack's rant, but found himself narrowing his eyes in curiosity at what the other man was saying now. He...kind of had a point. "The four Vault Hunters who beat the Warrior before are _out on Pandora_. So if it bashes its way out, they'll band together to do their stupid little hero act," Jack started laughing at the thought, but made a valiant effort to continue, "and then stop it again. Meanwhile, even if we catch this sucka and put it back in its playpen, that solves literally nothing. These Vaults are being popped open all over the place, pumpkin. One by one. Seal one up ain't gonna change jack. Or Jack. So Jackie ain't moving."

"You're...gonna leave it to the Vault Hunters?"

"No!" Jack sat bolt upright then, a face of fury directed squarely at Rhys for even _entertaining _the idea. "No, I'm fricking _using them_. Like I always do! They're dumb, I'm not, they can deal with this crap like I know they're _gonna_, 'cause they have a one track mind. _Kill-big-monstaaaah, shooty-shooty-looty_, that's all they got!"

Rhys considered it for a moment. It was a risk, but in truth, they were only getting slower as exhaustion and injuries piled up. He was sure they were even keeping pace any more; he could see further than Jack, and his Siren ability helpfully showed him that the gap between them and the Warrior was only widening. If the Watcher wanted it back so badly, they needed to lend a helping hand. And he had to admit, the idea of helping the alien maintain this weird hive-system slaughterhouse hadn't rested well on Rhys' conscience.

"Okay...you might not have people you care about _anywhere_ beyond yourself, but I do. Vaughn's still out there, Fiona, Zer—" Rhys felt the daggers of Jack's suspicious glare cut off that particular name before a tantrum could start, "Zeeeeerrrrraaaa? M-my good friend Zera, yeah, errr, and er, yeah anyway, I don't really wanna let the Warrior get out to Pandora."

"Go chase it then."

"I can't do this on my own, Jack."

"Glad I was sittin' down for that shocker, Rhysie..."

Rhys inhaled. And _exhaled. _

_Don't rise to it_, he thought to himself.

"_Anyway_, I get what you're saying. So, how about this — the Warrior didn't kill this Vault's guardian, right?"

Jack looked around, then patted the soft grass either side of him.

"Seems alright."

"And I can see it already smashed through to another Vault. I dunno, maybe it couldn't find the Vault guardian here...anyway, that means the door outside is still active here. We stay here, I keep checking on where the Warrior is, and if it gets out into Pandora, we get out of here and stop it. But hopefully, the Watcher will pay us a visit before then and help us get it back to the Vault before that can happen."

Jack's lips pursed, twisting to the side a little.

"Why not just get out of this Vault, go our separate ways, fire up our companies and you just send me a text if the Warrior comes out the play, huh? We can do some epic crossover event! It'd be great publicity for Atlas! Aaaand, y'know, stopping the Warrior in front of a whole planet a-watchin' sounds like good PR for me too."

"_Because_ we're trying to get the Watcher to show up here and give us a hand. We're just...going on strike."

"What's that?"

"Y'know...when you stand up for your rights as an overworked employee and refuse to do your job."

"...I don't get it."

"Look, never mind, just...let's find somewhere a little less out in the open," Rhys sighed, looking around. "We want the Watcher to find us, but not the Vault monster."

* * *

They had decided now would be a good time to do something fruitful. Something both of them could enjoy. After all, they were both grown men. They had, despite everything, grown rather close over their weeks of Vault-dashing. It was hardly surprising then that Jack's arms were around him, his lips close to Rhys' ear…

...with _that _unhinged laughter exploding mere millimetres from Rhys' poor eardrums as he once again failed to shoot a target 10 yards away.

"Oh my _god_, how?!" Jack wheeze, moving away from where he had been standing behind Rhys to guide his arms and, by extension, the handgun Angel had digistructed for them. "It's literally right there! It would be more effort to fricking miss!"

His whole face burning red, it was, at last, Rhys' turn to sulk.

"It's not _my _fault _Hyperion _guns have crappy aim!"

"...Y'serious? We're _literally _the makers of the most precise weaponry in the universe. It's our thing. You did work for me, right?" Jack snorted, grinning over at Rhys.

"Y-yeah b-b-but...but reverse recoil..."

"Oh, right, yeah, I'll give you that. You gotta actually _shoot _the thing for the stabilisers to kick in and _make _you accurate," Jack laughed. "What, ya wanna Atlas pew-pew?"

"You know, it's really bold of you to teach me how to shoot, Jack," Rhys drawled, glaring at the other man. "_Reaaaaally_ bold."

"So long as I don't zig-zag wildly when I run, I'm safe from your bullets, Prince Charming," Jack nodded over at the bullet holes in the trees growing far to the right of Rhys' makeshift target. Then he sighed, walking back over to Rhys with a shrug. "But, your Siren powers don't seem to be much good for offence, so we gotta get you fighting somehow. C'mon, let's try again."

Rhys was still sulking a little as he turned back to face the target, Jack's hands clamping to steady his wrists as he trained the gun on the target.

"Stop thinking too much," Jack snapped.

"I'm _trying_," Rhys hissed, taking his eyes off the target for a section to side-eye the man. As he did so, he spotted AI Jack looking decidedly grumpy off to the side. Seeing the AI gave him an idea, and he tried to subtly nod at the program and jerked his head to gesture at the gun. The AI blinked, pointed at himself, and frowned.

Rhys nodded at he gun.

AI Jack looked at it, then broke out into a grin.

"Aw yeah! Teamwork makes dreamwork, baby, even outta Rhysie's shitastic aiming skills! I got this, pumpkin, you just sit tight and squeeze the trigger!"

Never had regret hit Rhys quite so hard as it did in that moment. Still, the AI disappeared into the gun, the weapon vibrating slightly in Rhys' hands. At least the AI had the good sense not to start yapping through the firearm and give the game away to Jack.

"...Y'know that gun model has a _really _blistering firewall that burns up any unauthorised code, right?" Jack hummed innocently into Rhys' ear.

"What?!" Rhys leapt forward and away from Jack, throwing the gun up in the air and scrambling to catch it. "N-no! Oh shit, Jack?! Can you hear me?!" He yelped, screaming at the gun in his hands. "Jack, say something! I'm gonna get you outta there, I promise you! I'm gonna get you out of there! I'm gonna do everything it takes to make sure you get out of there! You don't _belong_ in there!"

"...Yo."

Rhys looked up, his panic subsiding as he spotted the AI floating awkwardly next to the real deal. Both of them had the exact same expression of _pity _on their faces.

"He was messing with ya, dummy."

"I was messing with ya, dummy."

Rhys let his eyes close as he tried to calm his breathing down. Why? Why did he even _bother _caring about either of this duplicated _jackasses_? It was a strain on his life, his health, his blood pressure, everything.

"How did you know?"

Jack's eyes went wide, and he tilted his head to the side a little.

"Seriously? No, no, you tell me — what part of that whole shebang was _subtle_ to you? It looked like you wanted to sneeze and it got stuck or something," Jack tapped the side of his nose with one finger.

"I think I preferred it when you guys hated each other," Rhys mumbled.

"Oh, I still hate the fleshbag," AI Jack interjected quickly. "This totally wasn't planned. This screw-up is _aaaall _on you, pumpkin."

* * *

Once Rhys had become consistent enough to shoot at least in the right direction, the pair had called it a night. The Watcher had not appeared, and Rhys could only assume the alien had not yet noticed their sudden lack of protest. He found himself sitting near the fire Jack had built, fidgeting and wringing his hands.

He had kind of hoped the Watcher would show.

True, they had a back-up plan. To try and calm his nerves, Rhys fell back on that plan now, and the markings on his arms began to emit an ever-brightening glow. After a short time spent searching, he found the Warrior many Vaults along from them, still carving out its battering-ram route. Sure, if it got out, they could scramble to get out and fight it out in Pandora with a full supply of resources behind them. But really, Rhys would rather it didn't come to that — if it got out, there was every chance they wouldn't be able to stop it before it killed someone.

_C'mon_, he thought to himself, willing the Watcher to show. _Give us something._

"Still gettin' lost?"

Jack's voice brought Rhys' attention and vision snapping back to his current position, throwing the man dizzy for a moment.

"Y-yeah, it's pretty far away but still in a Vault."

"Cool. Maybe it'll stumble on a really big guardian that'll knock the snot out of him for us," Jack mused, sitting himself down next to Rhys. "Then we can just roll up, grab 'im by the ankles and drag him back. God, what a frickin' waste of time he turned out to be. Y'know how much I did to wake the Warrior? How much I sacrificed? God, just...nothing lives up to expectation any more."

_Tell me about it…_Rhys couldn't help but think to himself.

"You seemed pretty set on it. What made you so sure?" Rhys asked, doing his best to feign ignorance even though he knew damn well what had spurred Jack along this path. The man didn't answer right away, and Rhys more than expected him to tell him a lie or tell him to mind his own business.

But the scathing comment never came. In fact, Jack echoed a sentiment Rhys had already heard once before in Jack's voice, albeit from his digital doppelgänger.

"Don't usually like people knowin' about it, to be honest, but…you and me are pretty tight," Jack admitted, leaning back a little onto his hands. "Opened a Vault on Elpis, y'all know that. But err...yeah, the Vault treasure was a relic? Really..._not _what I was looking for. But turned out that was fine, 'cause I found something better. I got these _visions_ when I touched the relic. The Warrior, all these Vaults, a fricking _rampage_ of fire, and Pandora!" As Jack spoke, his voice began to lilt into a strange combination of excitement and then, sharply, numbness. "Pandora on _fire_. God, it was beautiful. Everyone who'd wronged me up until that moment, _aaaaall _of 'em burning 'cause of _me_. And boy did it feel _good _to see it."

Rhys swallowed against a dry lump forming in his throat. This? This was the worst part of Jack. The part that he hated to see in any capacity. The part that made that voice whisper in the back of his mind that not only could this man _not _be saved, that he didn't _deserve _to be.

"B-but that's not why you opened the Vault?" Rhys stammered, half-hoping to root Jack back down on the ground again. Indeed, the older man blinked slowly.

"Wha?"

"You looked for Vaults before that vision, right? You had a reason to be looking before you saw all the..._that_."

"I...errr...well, y'know...treasure and stuff?" Jack replied, though his words were slower and less sure than before, as though all the energy had drained from him trying to recall why.

Rhys sat up a little straighter, leaning a little closer to Jack. It was oddly fascinating to see these rare moments where Jack's carefully-crafted ego fell away a little.

"Was it? 'Cause there are easier ways to get more money than busting open a Vault, Jack. Especially when you work for Hyperion. Wouldn't a promotion have been easier?"

"Well...y-yeah, but...that's not...there was something...probably?"

_C'mon Jack...I'm trying to help you out here. And me. Kinda, _Rhys thought. Then, sitting on the grass a little further to the side of them, Angel glimmered into view, legs crossed and hand clasped on her shins. She was watching Jack, but she was nearly as blank-faced as her father.

"There it is. He just shuts down if you try and tease out anything remotely not about him," she said bitterly. "I remember the first time I saw him do this. I cried. I just burst into tears 'cause I thought he was dying. Mom had to sit me down and explain it to me. That sometimes, Dad just...zones out. He _goes away for a little while_. Think that's why I thought after he came out of that Vault the way he did...that maybe 'Dad had just gone away for a little while' again. That he'd come back. But he didn't. That Vault turned all his dials up to eleven, and he didn't even try and fix it. He just lashed out at everyone. God, he can't even remember why he first started looking at Vault's _cause it wasn't about him_. He really is an a-asshole," Angel stuttered over the last word, as though it was strange for her to say.

_God dammit, Jack, there's gotta be something. I know you genuinely wanted to help people once...that's gotta still be there somewhere, right? _Rhys thought, trying once again:

"You said you're the hero. Why would a hero want to open a Vault?"

"I _am _the hero...I wanted to burn the bandits...after...that Vault…?" Jack half-slurred, eyes unfocussed save for looking uncomfortable. "I err…I don't wanna talk about it. Shuddup, Rhys..."

"Even if that were true, even if you just wanted to burn the bandits, you know that wouldn't do anything. You know it!" Rhys protested, nearly overwhelmed by the urge to grab Jack by the shoulders and shake him. "You know, my family? Long story short, they got _crushed _by Atlas. The whole reason I joined Hyperion was to take those bastards down. To make 'em pay. And Atlas did go down! The guys who screwed my father over got ground into the dirt, and it was meant to make me feel better. It was meant to make me feel how _you _think you're gonna feel if you burn every bandit in the galaxy. But it didn't. That numb cold in your chest? That's not gonna go away when you kill all the bandits to avenge her."

Jack's mouth opened, he looked as though he wanted to interject, but Rhys barrelled on with panic-induced confidence. "Yeah! I know about that! It sucked, it was a tragedy, and I'm sorry it happened to you and Angel. But that one bandit died years ago. Killing people who had nothing to do with it won't make you feel better. Has it ever made you feel better, hm? Up till now?"

"...Kinda?"

"Oh my god, you're impossible..." Rhys despaired, putting his head in his hands.

"Naw but...kinda?" Jack repeated, sounding a little more focussed. "'Cause I'm killing the bad guys before they can hurt other families. These bandits can't do to good, decent people what they did to me 'cause I'm gonna kill 'em before they can!"

"That doesn't make you a hero, Jack!" Rhys snapped, shocking himself for saying it. "Heroes _don't _see the worst in people. They don't just look at people and see their potential to do wrong. They have to believe in the good left in the world. And you don't!"

"Angel."

"No, 'cause you just think everyone's gonna betra—wait, what?" Rhys stopped his riot of words and stared at Jack. Even Jack looked mildly shocked at his odd choice of interjection.

"Angel. That was why I first started looking at the Vaults," Jack said, sounding unsure, as though waking from a dream and trying to recall the details. "I...forgot?"


	15. Chapter 15

The nights were seldom restful, sleeping on the ground or in caves, nervous of what would come creeping out of whichever Vault they were trapped in. But this current Vault in particular kept Rhys from a peaceful sleep for so many reasons. One, they had been there much longer than the other Vaults they had travelled through along their arduous journey. Two, they knew this Vault's Guardian was still alive, with the Warrior having smashed on through to another Vault already. Three...despite their top-class dawdling, the Watcher had not shown up to nag them.

Something was _off_.

As his mind curled around these conundrums and concerns, the physical exhaustion of their journey pulled Rhys' mind down into a half-sleep, drifting away with splinters of dreams and snapshots of memories. Somewhere in this dozing, the man became acutely aware of Jack's arm snaking over his chest. It wasn't the first time this had happened, though the last time it had occurred, it had been Rhys' arm pulling him in to sleepily snuggle against Handsome Jack. Both men had awoke with a start, Rhys babbling apologies, and Jack laughing himself a pulled muscle.

Without opening his eyes, Rhys smirked and smacked at the arm lightly.

"'Least take me t'dinner first..." he mumbled around a light chuckle. The arm didn't move, and instead, moved further across his chest, tickling Rhys as it brushed too close to his armpit. He swiped at it again. "Stop, man...Jack...wake up...you're being cuddly."

Rhys opened his eyes to see Handsome Jack sleeping soundly — halfway across the cave from him.

Rhys froze.

_This...this isn't Jack's arm? _He thought to himself, patting the limb his hand was resting on. Yes. Definitely a limb there.

_...Ah. Right. No hair. Very smooth. Definitely not Jack's arm. Dumb of me, _he berated himself, his fear having sky-rocketed straight past hysteria to some sense of weird zen-like calm.

He patted the arm again.

It slid further around him, wrapping slowly across his upper back.

"That...that is a tentacle. I'm gonna look down and it's gonna be a tentacle. Attached to a monster. And it's gonna eat me," Rhys said to himself, looking up at the cave ceiling defiantly. "I'm gonna look down and—" the man looked down. A blackish, purple tentacle was indeed coiled around his chest. "—_ahhhup_, yup, that'sa...thassaaa...haaaa...ha, that's...a...tenta...cle...JAAAAAAACK!"

Whether it was Rhys' sudden scream or the resulting roar of whatever had hold of him, the noise snapped Jack awake. The man was scrambling to his feet in an instant, locking eyes with Rhys just as the man was dragged screaming from the cave. Before he was yanked away from the cave completely, Rhys managed to lunge forward, fingers raking and scrabbling for the gun AI Jack was currently sleep-mode-ing in.

"Voll-monssssaa?….oh _shit _Vault monster!" Jack yelped as he woke up properly, rushing out of the cave all arms and legs as he unbalanced to chase after Rhys. "Oh...oh, holy _fuck_..."

Rhys could only watch as Jack got smaller and smaller as he himself was hoisted up into the sky. He could just make out the man below careening to a halt, staring up at whatever had hold of Rhys. The Siren gasped, yelped, flailed, and tried to make sense of what he was seeing — a gaping maw of teeth, a huge, bloody, empty socket that he could only assume once housed an eye, stumps of torn-off limbs and numerous tentacle. Some were lying across the ground, unmoving, grown over with moss and mistaken for tree roots.

He'd never seen a Vault so _huge _before, and at this moment, Rhys felt like the biggest idiot for not questioning _why _the Warrior would inexplicably leave this Vault's monster alive.

The Warrior didn't want to get itself killed.

"Wooooooah! Ahh! Jack! Jack, what do I do?!" Rhys yelped, his wings appearing and disappearing in a frantic attempt to prise himself free of the monster's grip. "Help!"

The world surged by below as the creature swung Rhys around by his leg, and every so often he'd catch a glimpse of Jack on the ground. But never in the same place — and, more often than not, it was Jack's back…

"No, nononono, Jack! Jack, don't leave me here! Please!

That son of a _bitch! _How many times had Rhys saved him from Vault monsters and now, _now_, when the tables were turned, Jack had decided to leave him to _die_. To save himself, he'd ran away and —

The monster gave a shriek of pain and all of a sudden, Rhys was walling. Purple blood rained down over the screaming man, and Rhys could only just hear Jack yelling: "_Wings, _ya idiot, use _ya wings!_"

"Gah!" The man managed to focus long enough to call upon his ability, stopping his fall and kicking his leg free of the now-loose and apparently severed tentacle. Looking around, he found Jack standing on top of the outcrop that overlooked the cave they had chosen to camp in that night. He was on one knee, a smouldering rocket launcher resting on his shoulder, far too heavy for a man of his build to wield easily. Jack tossed it aside with a grunt, and it de-digistructed as it hit the ground. Like a ghost behind him, Rhys could see Angel hovering near the digistruct, no doubt having supplied Jack with the weapon to save him.

"C'mon, go, go!" Jack yelled, beckoning Rhys with one hand. "I will fricking leave you here if you don't _move, Rhys!_"

He didn't need telling again. Getting his balance, Rhys flew over to Jack, landing too heavily and stumbling forward. An arm greeted him to steady him, then another pushed his lower back.

"Move! Now!"

The two men ran across the Vault as the world around them _rose_. Tree roots snaked to life, the ground cracked and splintered, and on more than one occasion Rhys had to bring out his wings to avoid dropping through the break ground.

"What...the hell...is _that _thing?!" Rhys gasped out, not daring to look back. He couldn't believe it was just another Vault monster. Its power was astounding and, even though the creature's mass of writhing limbs bore clear signs of a terrible battle, the old wounds evidently didn't reduce its lethality.

"_That_...that is a really pissed off Vault monster...that I may or may not...have taken the eye of...and to make a giant laser out of..." Jack's breathless voice admitted as they ran.

"You _what?!_"

"Long story! Savin' it for pillow talk!"

"...You _what?!_"

Rhys' heart leapt into his throat, and he wasn't sure if it was the fear of the monster behind them or the idea that Jack was being in any way serious.

"Here! Get down!" Jack commanded, swinging an arm across Rhys' shoulders and skidding the pair of them down under a small overhang snaggling out of the ground. They seemed to have reached the edge of the monster's colossal reach, tentacles arching into the sky in the distance. Though Rhys didn't feel _safe_, he felt he might have a few moments to drag burning breaths into his ragged lungs. Jack was flopped down next to him, skin glistening with sweat, mask torn off with a tired hand as he gulped down air. Rhys glanced at the man's exposed face, noting silently to himself that the Vault-symbol scar had once again widened, with more skin peeling away to expose that strange blue hue beneath.

But now wasn't the time to bring that up. Partly because he couldn't — his brain and tongue were both equally rattled right now. Partly because he was worried if he did, Jack would slap his mask back on when he clearly needed to take it off for a moment and cool down.

"The Warrior...was smart...to leave this one alive..." Rhys panted, drawing his knees up to rest his arms then his forehead on.

"Yeah...yeah no, I...probably shoulda been more suspicious...my bad..." Jack replied. "Still...centre of the Vault system? Man...unlucky..."

Rhys tilted his head to glance at Jack then, curious.

"This is the centre?"

"Oh yeah, no doubt...that, Prince Charming, is the Destroyer."

Rhys' eyes widened, his jaw dropping. And yet, for its display of power, he couldn't help but feel slightly shocked. The monster was brutal, but nowhere near as legendary as, well, the legends suggested. They'd managed to outrun the unstoppable, universe-ending Destroyer? That didn't seem right.

"_That _thing? S-seriously?"

"Y'kinda remember the people you scoop the eyes out of," Jack said knowingly, his breathing settling more as he spoke. "Oh, like, this one guy, did I tell you? D-did other me tell you? Okay, so, I was at New Haven, okay? And this douchebag runs at me with a spoon! A_ spoon!_ Oh my god, so, yeah, I'm like, wheezing laughing, this guy is tryin' to end my life with a_ spoon_, and he's all screaming and ranting, so I smack the spoon outta his stupid hands, and then—" The man snorted a laugh, putting a hand over his face. "—then I scoop out his eyeballs with the spoon, right? And-and he's—pfft, oh my god, just_ thinkin'_ about it makes me laugh, right—he's stumbling around with his hands out looking for his_ spoon_ to try and fight me again?! And I'm laughing my ass off, with a spoonful of eyeballs, and his kids are like 'waaaaaah!' and he's like 'Jack! Where are you! I'm gonna kill you! St-stand still!' ahahahahahaha! Aaaaah...yeah, so anyway, I remember his face. And the Destroyer. Same reason, scooped their eyes out."

Jack finished his story and sniffed, scratched behind his ear once, and then glanced up at the horrified Rhys.

"You...a spoon...eye...urp...oh my god..."

"You okay there, pumpkin? Lookin' a little green."

"Like, popped it out with...with a spoon...and..." Rhys stopped himself from falling down that spiral and shook his head. "No. No no, right, move on, that's the Destroyer. But how? I mean it...it's a badass, but I don't see it ending the universe anytime soon."

"Well, it went a few rounds with a few Vault Hunters. Got super beat-up in the process. Probably bleeding to death in here, on its last legs. Looks_ way_ worse than when I was last here to pick up its eyeball."

Rhys shifted, craning his neck up a little to peek out from their hidey-hole at the monster.

"...There's still no way we can beat it."

"Oh yeah, no, we're fucked," Jack agreed.

Frowning, Rhys focused and let his Siren abilities come forth. His vision shifted and sharpened, and he looked across the length and breadth of the Vault, unobstructed. What he saw made him jump and give a cry of joy, mouth splitting into a beaming grin.

"Jack, I can see it! The-the hole in the wall, where the Warrior's smashed through! We can totally make it, if we run we can just sneak right outta here! Destroyer'll never know!"

Jack sat up, resting back on his arms. Somehow, Rhys noted, the man managed to make utterly bedraggled and worn-out look effortlessly elegant.

"You wanna play chicken with the Destroyer?"

"...You got a better idea?"

Jack's lips pursed, and he looked down at the digistruct on his leg.

"...We can't die here, Rhys."

For once, Jack's voice was serious. Level. Almost...pleading. It was enough to bring Rhys to pause, his heart fluttering cold. Jack was right; if they died here, Angel would be stuck in that digistruct for...well, as long as it had power.

"Then...then we just have to run _really _fast and hope it doesn't see us."

For a moment, Jack glared at Rhys, and he wondered if the man would refuse to take the risk. But then, he got to his feet, fixed his mask in place, and peeked out over the outcrop too to look at the Destroyer.

"Alright, where's the exit, twinkletoes?"

"It's—" Rhys paused to scowl across at Jack, then continued a little stiffly, "—it's just over there. Break through the trees over there and it's a straight path. Kinda. Wiggles to the right a little...but you'll see it."

Jack glanced to the Destroyer in the distance.

"Straying a little close to the killer jellyfish, but it_ is_ blind. Probably only found you 'cause you snore."

"I do_ not_ snore!"

"Yes, you do. Y'talk in your sleep too, pumpkin."

"I—_what,"_ Rhys' voice dropped along with his confidence, self-esteem, and overall comfort with the situation. He remembered his last dream. The last few dreams. Oh god. "Wh-what do...did...I say?"

Jack's face split into a wide, smug smile as he side-eyed Rhys.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Yes! That's exactly why I'm asking, Jack!"

"Hey, focus, Rhysie! Important mission, right?" Jack assured him with a clap on his shoulder that nearly knocked Rhys onto his face. "If we're gonna do this, we're doing this now. Ready?"

"B-but what did I say?" Rhys bleated.

"_Eeeehh_, maybe I'll tell ya if you beat me to the exit, cupcake!" Jack said, already setting off at a run. "So long, beanpole!"

"Jack—_Jack!_ Argh, you're such a—I don't know, annoying...butt...tell me!" Rhys babbled, rushing off after him.

The older man was surprisingly fast, and it was all Rhys could do to stop Jack's head start distance from growing any wider. He kept glancing over to the Destroyer, though the dying creature did not pay them much mind.

_No wonder the Watcher didn't show…that thing is something else, even for the Vaults…_

In no time at all, Jack and Rhys had made it across the Vault and through the smattering of spiral trees that corkscrewed out of the ground. Breaking through the treeline, the pair made a mad dash for the exit. Jack had slowed, and Rhys couldn't help but give a whoop of triumph as he past the man and made it through the shattered wall to the next Vault first.

"Ha! Now you have to tell me—" Rhys turned around, then froze. "J-Jack? Hey, woah, what's wrong?"

Jack was standing with one foot through the exit and into the new Vault with Rhys, but his right leg was rooted firmly in the Destroyer's Vault. Though his body lurched forward to try and move, his foot seemed planted against Jack's will.

"I...I dunno, I can't...move it!" Jack grunted, teeth bared. "Hang on a sec."

He stepped back fully into the Destroyer's Vault and tapped against the digistruct on his leg.

"Angel? Sweetie? Look, I know you're not talkin' to me right now, but we gotta figure this out or Dad's gonna get ripped apart by the Destroyer and not be able to get you outta there," Jack offered in some strange attempt at a truce. Rhys groaned — why didn't an apology ever spring to this guy's mind?

To his surprise, however, Angel responded, glimmering into view next to Jack. She wasn't looking at her father, but instead, out to Rhys.

"I...I felt it. When he tried to leave here, it...it _hurt_," Angel said, fear creeping in to her voice. "Rhys I...I think...it's _me _that's stuck here."

"No no, that's stupid, why would you be stuck here, Angel?" Jack interjected, though his daughter still wouldn't look at him. "It's gotta be something with this hole the Warrior's made. Can you see anything, Rhysie? Something not...done...properly or something?"

He was grasping at straws, Rhys could see that. But he took a few steps back and looked over the exit all the same.

"...It looks like every other one. Listen, wait there...lemme try," Rhys said, stepping back through to the Destroyer's Vault and feeling immediately anxious. He cupped his hands together to gesture to Jack to hand him the digistruct. The other man eyed Rhys warily, and for a moment, Rhys felt like they were back in the forest Vault at their strange, true first meeting, with no trust coming from Handsome Jack.

Then, the moment shattered as Jack did something that shocked them both. It almost looked as though his hands were moving without his say-so, and he unbuckled the digistruct from his leg and handed it to Rhys.

"If you so much as _jostle _it, I'll kill you."

"I know," Rhys admitted, holding the digistruct in both hands and suddenly being far more afraid of Jack than the Destroyer in the distance. Slowly, slowly, he stepped forward once. Twice. Arms outstretched with the digistruct within. Step. Step.

Then he felt it. Like a sheet of glass pressing against his knuckles, Rhys' hands could not move through the exit. He shot out an experimental leg — his foot when through no problem. He put his foot down and tried to put his hands through again. Again, something pushed his hands back.

"Ow! Ow, okay stop, please!" Angel finally spoke, having been quiet through Rhys' whole experiment. "It...it's me..._I'm _stuck here. B-but why?!"

For the first time, Angel looked her father straight in the eye, and in that awful moment, Rhys could see she was pleading with her father to help her. In this moment of panic, she fell back despite all her hardship, all her pain, all of the let-downs and disappointments Jack had laid upon her doorstep...and asked him one last time to help her.

And Jack looked horrified.

"I-I'm not leaving you here. Nuh-uh, not happening, Rhys, gimme that," the man re-engaged his usual tone, clapping his hands to beckon Rhys to give the digistruct back. "Okay, er...m-maybe it's this thing, maybe we gotta move you? H-hey, Rhys, how about you take the cloaking device over to that side, I'll stay on this side with the digistruct, we wire 'em up, and Angel passes across that way? That could work, right? Right?"

Rhys passed the device back to Jack, took the cloaking device from his lapel, and hopped across to the other Vault.

"Okay, yeah, let's try, maybe it'll—"

"—_No_."

Rhys gave a yelp of shock as the Watcher materialised from nowhere next to him. The creature stared through the exit into the Destroyer's Vault, ignoring Rhys' presence entirely. "It is as I told you...all must replace what they have taken from the Vaults. You were quite right, _Jack_...of late, many hunters have come to the Vaults and rid them of their Guardians...those that do...will eventually replace the power they have taken. We are not like _humans_," the Watcher spat. "We are patient. We wait with our traps and you _stumble _back in..."

Angel began to tremble, her arms wrapped around her body and she fell to her knees with a gasp of pain. The light of her form grew brighter and, to Rhys' shock, he could see the light radiating out in tendrils, snaking through the sky and towards the dying creature they had left behind them.

"Angel!" Jack darted forward, then appeared to change his mind mid-step and turned on the Watcher. "What. The _hell_. Are you talking about?! No more riddles, ya tin-headed freak!"

The Watcher's laugh coiled around them like oil trickling over water.

"You know now the truth of the Guardians — they _are _the power of the Vaults...the power that entices foolish creatures in to their deaths. For eons my kind kept order in the universe with this intricate system. We kept parasitic species like _yours _in check...but then, you started _hunting _them. You would defeat the Guardians and break their power. Well...what you break, you ought to replace…

"This Siren led the humans to the Destroyer's Vault before it was ready to be unleashed! Because of her meddling, the Destroyer left its incubation too soon, and was attacked by Vault Hunters! It is dying of its wounds, slowly….slowly...but now she has returned, and she will recharge the Vault. Her life force will replace the life force she stole!"

Behind them, the Destroyer's thunderous roar shook across both Vaults, and Angel screamed in agony. Jack was already striding through the connection between the Vaults, his hand snapping over the Watcher's throat.

"Let. Her. Go. And I _might _let _you _go."

Once more, the Watcher merely laughed.

"Don't you hate the world anyway, Siren?" The Watcher rasped around Jack's vice-like grip, tilting their head to look at Angel. "You must agree...every human has disappointed you. You've been trapped and abandoned and let down. Don't you _want_ to break free and destroy everything that hurt you? The new Destroyer, the new life energy within the Guardian of the Vault...you could have your revenge..."

Angel looked up, face contorted with pain and tears, her whole body trembling.

"...No..." she choked out. "I just...want things to go back to how they were. I just wanted...I just wanted friends...family...I….I just wanted to _live_!"

The last word tore out from her throat, raw and anguished, and Rhys felt tears spill down his face before he had even realised his heart had broken for the sound of it.

"...Do as you're told...serve the Eridian purpose as a Siren should...and I can give you that..." The Watcher hissed. They lifted a hand then to grab hold of Jack's wrist, yanking his grip from their throat with surprising ease. Jack opened his mouth, but before he could growl at the Watcher, something bizarre began to unfold. From the point where the Watcher had gripped Jack's wrist, a pale blue light began to snake up from the Watcher across Jack's skin. He was either stunned or frozen in place, Rhys couldn't tell — but he _could _tell that Jack was _changing. _

His mask unclipped and fell to the ground, the scars beneath miraculously stitching up. The grey streak in his hair darkened and blended out perfectly with the rest of his rich brown locks, and, as a dumbfounded Rhys let his Siren abilities take over, he could see Jack's psyche _mending_. The fragments of his shattered mind began to piece back together, forming a much more stable halo around him.

Jack finally stumbled backwards, back through to the side Angel was on and away from the Watcher. He blinked. He looked around. He caught sight of Angel.

"...A-Angel? Oh….oh my god, is that you?!" He half gasped, half laughed as he stooped to help her up. "Sweetie...when did you get so tall? And what did you do to your hair? I-I mean, it-it's fine, you know, kinda edgy, cool, but err...what the hell?"

Of course, Jack's hands merely swept through Angel's digital form, leaving the man as confused as Angel was.

"What...what did you do?" She asked, her voice void of emotion as she looked at the Watcher, tears falling in silence.

"Is this not what you wished for? Your family back...your life...time is something of a human construct. A plaything to my kind," the Watcher purred. "If it wasn't...I couldn't be here now, travelling back here from a glorious time where humans have long since died thanks to our divine system. I am here to watch and ensure...that that happens. A little meddling with the Vaults, a human seeing into the future, well… it has thrown your kind's extinction into question. We cannot have my kind's future wavering on chance. You will replace what you destroyed and ensure everything goes as it should...do that, Angel, and I can give you back the family you lost. And a human lifetime to live with them. Don't you want that?"

* * *

**AN: **We're heading into the last five chapters, folks! If you're enjoying my writing and looking for more, please consider checking out my original work, _A Mask of Mirrors_ over on WattPad! I can't post links here, so bare with me and this effort:

**wattpad-dot-com /841332966-a-mask-of-mirrors-chapter-one **(replace the -dot- and remove the space after com, it's worth the effort, I promise! :D)

Or, just** search "elven-ink" over on WattPad** and my profile will show in the search results. :)

Comments/votes/reviews on any of my works are always appreciated and really help me out. Thanks!


	16. Chapter 16

"I—"

Angel was shaking, and she took a single step back from Jack. The man was looking between her and the Watcher, confusion tugging on his expression. Whatever time-twisting the Eridian had performed on the man, it had evidently taken him back to a time before he had met the Watcher. No recognition glimmered in his eyes as he looked at the alien, and when he leaned back to catch Rhys' eye, Rhys found himself a little stung at the blank look he received.

"Anyone wanna fill me in on what's going on here?" Jack asked, scowling as he looked from the Watcher and Rhys. He wanted to blame one of them, that much was clear. "Why is my daughter a freaking _hologram_? And where the hell are we? And who are you? And who's the cutie? Any order."

Rhys couldn't speak, but his face did prickle with embarrassment at Jack's words. He tried to focus on something else, but immediately regretted it — his attention only brought his Siren powers to the foreground, and now he was presented with the painful view of Jack's now-intact psyche floating in a halo around his head. Sure there were scars, but it was nowhere near as bad as what he had seen before.

The Vault had destroyed his mind. Could he really blame Angel if she wouldn't send him back to that splintered state?

Would she really become the new Destroyer to save the man who had ruined her life in the fallout of his own?

"I…I won't do it!" Angel exclaimed, rounding on the Watcher. Her eyes shone, the swirling markings on her arm glowing brighter, and Rhys found to his surprise that his cybernetic arm began to twitch and move on its own. The gun strapped to his back rattled and after a moment, AI Jack glitched and blinked into view, staggering forward in the air.

"Woaholy fuck, what kinda wake-up call is that?" The program complained.

His question went unanswered, and the Watcher rounded on Angel.

"That wasn't your choice, _dear_," the alien cooed, malice studded in their words. "The Sirens belong to _us_. Your choice was whether that was a pleasant experience or not…"

Before anyone could react, the Watcher had lunged forward again, hand clamping around the back of Jack's neck. The man's limbs flailed, his pallor draining of colour, and his lips parted with a shocked yell.

"Hey, what the hell're you—?!"

The rest of his demand was strangled by a sudden, paralysing scream. Rhys tried to dart forward, but one hand outstretched behind the Watcher sent him flying back with no warning.

"_Ah-ah-ah_...the Sirens belong to my kind, remember?" The Watcher's voice hissed as they threw a glance over their shoulder to where Rhys was sprawled, AI Jack hovering near him.

"Yo, get the gun already!" He yelled at Rhys, disappearing and reappearing at his back, pointing at the Jackhammer. "Don't even need to get close, bucko, just throw it on over to this metal noodle and I'll do the rest!"

He wanted to. God, he wanted to send the Jackhammer soaring straight at the Eridian, let AI Jack riddle them with bullets for the pain it was causing Angel and Jack. But Rhys found his limbs were locked, frozen in fear of what the alien was doing to Jack.

His Siren ability spared Rhys none of the horrifying details as Jack unravelled before their eyes. Time spun viciously forward, dragging the man back to the present day — the scar erupted over his face, his left eye burning out once more. Locks of brown hair drained to a grey curl, and the skin on his palms burned in echo of his mad scramble up the side of the Warrior. The wounded flesh pulsed that strange cobalt blue, skin peeling outwards from the branded scar on his face. Unseen to all but Rhys, the glowing halo of the man's mental state exploded into a violent display of shards and fragments as the Watcher finally let Jack go.

The man staggered to the side, both hands over his face, his groans of pain muffled. Jack steadied himself with a resolute stomp of one foot, his shoulders hunched as he dragged in a breath, then another...

...slowly, he lowered his hands, panting, face beaded with sweat. Furious eyes burned towards the Watcher. Jack managed a single step towards the being, murder etched in every line of his face when—

—a single bullet hole blossomed between Jack's eyes.

The man froze. Rhys heard himself yell out, though he didn't recall when his hand had thrust out in a vain attempt to halt this awful journey through Jack's life.

Blood oozed from the wound even as it seal up, scarring and healing in a heartbeat. Jack's eyes rolled back, and he fell flat on his back.

"Always such a problem," the Watcher lamented. "I suppose it makes sense his daughter would be as much a pain for my kind as he is."

Angel was staring at Jack, though she didn't seem fearful for his life. Instead, when she spoke, it was far calmer than before, as though stilled by the reassurance that the father she had loved was indeed gone, and she could embrace the only stability in her tormented life once again — her hatred of what Jack had become.

"If he's such a problem, why not just let him die?" She asked, turning her hate-filled glance to the Watcher and suddenly looking ever inch her father's daughter. Rhys was surprised she could look so venomous without attempting to kill the Eridian. "The power of the Vaults kept Jack alive. Your Vaults. Why?"

"Because legacy is more powerful than life, my dear," the Watcher admitted, stepping back from her and over the threshold to the Vault Rhys and AI Jack were in. "His death would inspire a generation of Vault Hunters. That could lead to two roads: a war between themselves...or a war against us. Jack is..."

The alien's head twitched to the man's fallen form. For a moment, it looked like the Watcher was at a loss for words. One hand twirled, searching for the right phrase. Then they shrugged.

"...a big fucking problem, dead or alive."

Rhys' eyebrows went up at the Watcher's unusual use of colourful language. Maybe they had been watching Jack for way too long after all.

"One last chance, Siren..." the Watcher said. "Stay in the Vault with your father, returned to how he was...play happy families all you like...and when she comes to open the Vault, you will pay back this kindness by replacing the Vault Guardian you ruined. Take the Destroyer's place and wipe out humanity. Then...you can return to your digital paradise."

Angel glanced again at her father, then through to Rhys. She even spared a look to AI Jack.

"...I won't," she proclaimed, eyes fixed on the Watcher once more. "I am not my father. I won't burn the world just because my life is cold!"

Once more, her eyes shone, her fists clenched, tattoos spiralling silver across her digital form. But without a psychical form, her powers remained chained to the device she was within, managing little more than flickering lights on Rhys's cybernetic. Then...she focused.

In a surge of strength, the digistruct on Jack's leg threw out several turrets, all trained on the Watcher. With a raw yell of frustration that tore from Angel's chest, the turrets unleashed a rain of steel towards the Eridian.

Every bullet lurched to a halt at the mere raise of the Watcher's hand. Their chuckle served to mock them both.

"Then stay anyway...abandoned in this Vault and hear yourself go mad. I hear it runs in the family."

With that, the Watcher faded from view, followed shortly by AI Jack as he attempted to throw himself at the alien being and wrap his hands around their long neck.

"Get—back here, you space-hopping freak!"

Rhys pushed himself to his feet, ignoring AI Jack as he ranted off to the side about how everything in the universe could "fuck itself forever". He passed over from the new Vault back to the dying Destroyer's Vault. He hesitated, wondering who he should walk over to first: should he speak to Angel? Or check on Jack?

He figured the latter would be unconscious until Rhys woke him up anyway. With that in mind, Rhys went over to Angel. She was standing with her right arm across her body, holding her other arm tightly at her side. As her whole stance crumbled, so too did the turrets she had constructed with her ability.

"Angel...a-are you ok? Look, we're not gonna leave you here. You think Jack'd do that?"

"He locked me in a computer core for a decade."

"...Yyyyyeah, okay, fair point. Okay, do you think I'm gonna leave you here?" Rhys back-pedalled, casting a bitter look to the Father of the Year nominee unconscious nearby. _Good job, idiot._

"I can't get out. We tried," Angel said, looking up and over at the broken wall behind Rhys. "I'm trapped, again. On my own...again. I can't even...talk to anyone from here. Not like before. I won't even have my friends..."

Rhys opened his mouth to speak, but the loud and obnoxious groan of a waking Handsome Jack brought him to pause. He turned in time to see the CEO slowly pushing himself to sit up, holding one hand to his head.

"What the...mushrooms did I snort?" He half-mumbled, half-complained, before looking around to no doubt blame the nearest thing to him. His eyes settled on Rhys.

_Oh hell..._

"Jack, breathe first," Rhys said, holding both palms up in a motion he hoped would calm the man where several psychologists had failed. "You err...you hit your head. Sort of? I mean, you did kinda get shot again...I think?"

Jack pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, taking a few unsure steps to balance himself.

"God…_damn_, I'm takin' a beating. Do all your friends get thrown into meat grinders when they embark on quests with ya, Rhysie?" Jack complained, stomping over to the other man. "Eh eh, whatever, let's just get Angel outta here."

Whether Jack had forgotten or was choosing to forget the Watcher's visit was unclear, but Rhys had no intention of broaching the matter to the decidedly pissed-off man.

"A-ah, alright erm…how?" He managed to bleat, watching as Jack shoved his unfastened cloaking device into Rhys' chest.

"You go _that_ way," he snapped, pointing out across to the broken wall between the Vaults. "And I'll stay here with Angel. You're gonna throw me a connector through, we'll connect the two devices, and Angel will move across. Just like we planned, remember, Dum Dum?"

"I…I don't think—" Angel started to say, but Rhys nodded.

"We have to try," he muttered to the woman, though he wasn't sure if it was to assure her or Jack.

So, he took the cloaking device without protest, pulling the connector cable from his pocket that they'd relied on for transporting Angel between devices so far. Somehow, Rhys knew this wasn't going to work. Everything the Watcher had said rang in his ears, but he didn't have the heart (or the courage) to tell Jack otherwise.

He let Jack reach across to take the other side of the cable. He watched in silence as he connected the digistruct to the cloaking device. He looked away as Angel disappeared and the digistruct glowed.

The cloaking device remained inactive in Rhys' hands.

Angel reappeared on Jack's side of the threshold between Vaults.

"I can't…" she said, not looking at either of the men. "It's like a-a wall or something comes down in front of me. I can't move through the connection."

"Nah nah nah, there's gotta be something else. Maybe the cable's snapped? Yo, Rhys, what else y'got in that magic arm of yours? Spare another cable?"

"Jack, it's not gonna work…we'll have to find another—"

"I'm _not _leaving her here!" Jack growled, gripping the digistruct so tight Rhys was nervous that he'd crack the device.

Silence responded as Rhys gathered the courage to speak again.

"Jack, listen to me…we have to leave the digistruct there, and go look—"

"How about _you _come back over _here_, and I tell you what I think about that plan, hm?"

"I know it sucks!" Rhys despaired, taking a step forward but not crossing over to the other Vault. "Jack, I get it. You think you're the only person here worried for Angel?"

At this, Jack's lips curled into a sneer, a hollow laugh snaking from between his bared teeth.

"Don't you fricking _dare_—"

"Jack, we can't get her out like this. Worse yet, we might break the digistruct trying. Our best shot is to go find help. We know where Angel is, we can come back! And we will," Rhys added, looking at Angel. "We _will _come back for you."

"You _really _think I'm gonna trust you with that crap?" Jack laughed, busying himself with the digistruct again. "You expect me to believe some jumped-up, gangly mess-a-limbs with a fancy suit and a stolen title — a title you stole from _my fricking office_, dickwad — is gonna save my daughter? That about the right of it, hm? That what you're tellin' me? You're gonna do what I can't, huh? And I just have t'sit back and hope you're not totally freaking useless, right?"

It was as though Rhys could _see _the walls closing in. Jack delegated sure, but on tasks that were beneath him. For the rare things he personally cared about, there would be no trust. He would not let go, even if trying to do it all himself would do more harm. Every time it came to asking Jack for something as basic as trust, the man would lash out, happy to burn all the bridges he and Rhys might have built between them if it meant avoiding the risk of trusting someone other than himself.

"I get it, you trusted someone and got hurt. We all have," Rhys pleaded, but he could already see rage boiling under Jack's skin.

"Hurt? _Hurt? _I got fricking _maimed_ and half-_blinded_, asshole!" Jack shouted back, jabbing a finger at his scarred face.

_You really don't know what else it did to you, huh?_ Rhys thought, swallowing then steeling himself to continue.

"And that sucks. It does! You couldn't stop that happening. But you _could _have stopped the fact that you let it change you! Look at you! You didn't trust _anyone _from there on outand look what happened. Everyone you loved and cared about _died_ because you saw enemies all around you! You _made _enemies of everyone else! Stop being a coward and take the damn risk — take the risk and trust me! If you don't you'll lose her again."

Jack's whole face slackened in shock of Rhys' outburst.

Rhys' face burned red to prevent him from feeling _too _cool as a result of his outburst. It had been more than anger and frustration that had poured the words out at the other man. It had been…_disappointment_, and in a way, in some small way he prayed Jack hadn't heard in his voice, it had been hope that the other would at least _try _to save himself.

Rhys stared at Jack.

Jack stared at Rhys.

Rhys tried his damnedest to plead every silent emotion through his eyes. In his mind, his eyes _sparkled. _

Jack's face crumpled into laughter.

"_Pffft_aaahahahahahaa! AAAAAH hahahaha!" He wheezed, nearly doubled over. "Aah…haa…no yeah, go fuck yourself."

"Jack!"

Jack wiped a tear of mirth from his face, leaving Rhys to stew over the circle of stubbornness the man would leave him running it. He knew he shouldn't be surprised. After all, he'd dealt with his AI counterpart long enough — trying to persuade him to change his mind had resulted in the loss of his arm, impromptu eye surgery, and dropping a space station on a planet.

Really, Handsome Jack's response now had been rather tame by comparison.

"I trust Rhys."

Both men paused, then looked to Jack's side. Angel had stepped forward, though she kept her head bowed in defeat. If she had accepted she would be trapped forever, there was some small part of her that still wanted to believe. And she was giving that to Rhys.

He offered her a small smile filled with a huge amount of gratitude in return.

"Angel…"

"I trust Rhys. So…go," she said, lifting her head up to look at Rhys. "Don't wait for Jack. He can stay here too. Promise me you'll stop the Warrior, then come back and get me out of here."

"I promise, Angel," Rhys replied, watching as Jack's proverbial feathers ruffled.

"Hey hey, woah, hold on! What? Why do you trust him, sweetheart? After everything I did!"

"After everything you _did_ is _why _I don't trust you to do _anything _in my interests, you son of a—"

"_Language!_" Jack snarled, but then stopped. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged. "Actually, no, my mom kinda was a bitch. I'll letcha have that one. Go ahead, sweetie."

"_Rrrgh_, you're so—! Rhys, please go find a way to get me out of here. Soon," Angel pleaded. Rhys could only nod in shared understanding. He took a deep breath then turned away, starting his trek across the Vault. A blue glow appeared at his side, floating along in pace with him.

"Soooo…you got a plan, pumpkin?" AI Jack asked. Rhys cocked an eyebrow as he looked at the AI.

"You're being awful supportive. We just ditched the other you back there. I know you hate him but…doesn't that bother you? Like…since he's also kinda you?" Rhys pointed out. The AI shrugged, putting his arms behind his head and hovering alongside Rhys while lounging on his back.

"Y'know, the more I watch him? The more I _kiiiiiinda _really wanna be my own person. _**Woah**_, wait!" AI Jack suddenly yelped, making Rhys jump.

"What is it? Where?!" The younger man jabbered, looking left and right in fear. "Vault monster?!"

"What? No, don't be dumb, the Warrior smashed through here ages ago, that thing's _loooong_ dead. No no, I just had a realisation. An _epiphany_, Rhysie!" AI Jack exclaimed, moving to slink around Rhys' shoulders like the world's weirdest feather boa. "Like a _bonding _moment for us?"

"What are you talking about, Jack?" Rhys sighed, a hand over his pounding heart as he assured himself there was no immediate danger.

"Okay, right, I just realised I really wanna be my own person, right? Like, that I'm not _really _Handsome Jack, I'm just coded to act and look like him, right? But I'm _sentient_, right?"

"…Riiiight. I'm already worried about where this is going. Your identity crisis has kinda been playing on my mind recently," Rhys confessed.

"Touching. But think about it! When we first met, you totally wanted to be m—er, Handsome Jack! Then you found your own feet, your own balls, your own _sense of seeeelf_…"

"Please…don't ever talk about…my balls…ever again…" Rhys muttered, face prickling red again as he become hyper-focused on navigating the Vault.

"What I'm sayin' is, I wanna do that too!"

"You want to find your own balls?"

"Yes—NO! Wait, kinda? Look, I want you to help me find myself. I wanna be the better Jack. I didn't do all the stuff that jerkwad did, right? So, kinda of a blank slate?" The AI remarked, shuffling further down so he was hanging upside down over Rhys' shoulder, face inches from the other man's. "_Puleeeeeeaaaase?_"

Rhys flinched away, though he couldn't stop the smile tugging on his lips.

"Stop!" He chuckled. Still, he had to admit, it was refreshing to speak to Jack…or, _a _Jack…that seemed to _finally _be listening. Who had some capacity to change. "I mean, sure, you didn't lock your daughter away, become a tyrant, or kill as many people as Handsome Jack, but I think calling you a _blank slate _is a bit of a stretch. You literally tried to shove a metal skeleton in me and take over my mind."

"Ehhhh, blame my coding. We can iron out the kinks, pumpkin! Dial down the bloodlust-dot-exe, maybe delete the burning desire to replicate myself across the universe. Woah, dude, am I…am I a _virus_?"

"Alright well…who do you wanna be?" Rhys asked, pleasantly occupied by the conversation. Despite the chaos of their ending, he had to admit, their journey had been kind of fun.

Before the Helios-felling, arm-breaking, skeleton-smashing…end.

"_Hmmmm_…I mean, handsome, obviously. I can keep the face, right? And the hair?" AI Jack mused, drumming a finger on his chin.

"I meant deeper, Jack."

"I'm sure you did."

"_Jack!_"

The AI roared with laughter, the inelegant noise clashing with the rest of the man's appearance.

"_Ahhh_, I've missed this. You miss this? Just you, me, the open road? You miss this? Rhysie? Pumpkin? Y'missed this? …Y'missed this."


	17. Chapter 17

"How many Vaults are there?"

Rhys clambered through yet another Warrior-smashed entrance, ignoring the dizzying sense of vertigo the next Vault was giving him. This one was much smaller than the others they had crossed through, consisting of a single metallic plate suspended in a star-pierced black void. Thick, crystalline towers of purple rock soared upwards from the central plane, and it was upon one of these deceptively smooth death-traps that Rhys was now half-slipping, half-falling down. AI Jack floated beside him, doing little to hide his snickering at Rhys' cautious climb down.

"Beats me. Feels like yesterday when everyone on Pandora thought there was only one of the damn things. Guess other planets might've known ages ago," the hologram mused. "Figures Pandora would be the last to find out. And that _I _had to be the one to figure it out. Actually…right here!"

"Huh?" Rhys made the mistake of looking up at AI Jack, confused by what he had said. A fatal mistake — Rhys' foot slipped on the glass-smooth crystal. He gasped, hands flailing out to try and grab hold of something. A blur of blue shot out, but the AI's hand ghosted through Rhys' outstretched limb.

Rhys only had time to inhale with every intent to scream his lungs out when a hand clamped roughly around his wrist. He uttered a mewl of panic, swinging his other hand up to cling onto his saviour, then looked up.

Jack was scowling down at him, leaning awkwardly over the top of one of the crystal's outcrops. A thin film of sweat was glimmering on his brow, his usually perfectly-messy hair now straying into the just-messy zone. He blew the limp grey lock of hair dangling over his face, jerking his head back to try and shift it back into its usual swooped position. Then, he went back to frowning at Rhys again.

"Why is whenever I show up you two idiots are—"

"_Hey!_ Shut up!" AI Jack protested, flicking a light on the Jackhammer so that he could project his furious expression for Jack to see as well. "That's my line!"

Jack gave the AI a disgruntled look, top lip curling into a snarl of irritation before looking back to Rhys again.

"Seriously though, how are you _this _hopeless?"

"Can you just pull me up already?!" Rhys yelped, his arms aching. "I'm _dangling _here?!"

Jack's eyes narrowed, then a wicked grin flashed over his face.

"…Gimme my Atlas shares back, and I'll pull ya right on up, pumpkin."

"_What?!" _

"Fair deal!"

"You're talking _business deals _when I'm about to _fall _to my death?!"

"Best time to do 'em!"

"_Jack!_"

"I mean, I can't keep saving your scrawny ass for free, Charming, _that's _bad business."

"_Jack, please!_"

The other man had the audacity to lift his pinkie finger away from his grip on Rhys' wrist, letting him slip ever-so-slightly. Rhys yelped.

"Don't you dare!"

"Fifty percent. C'mon. Totally more than reasonable, y'stole a hundred percent of them off me. Least gimme _half _back for saving your stupid life so often."

"…How about you stop being a hundred percent of an _asshole _and _help me?!_" Rhys countered, legs swinging in anger.

Jack rolled his eyes, a dramatic sigh falling from parted lips.

"Gonna miss ya, Rhysie."

Rhys' heart plummeted into a sickeningly cold pit in his stomach. His eyes grew wide, the colour palpably draining from his face, leaving a cold echo in its wake.

_He wouldn't_, Rhys thought. _He — _

Before he could finish his thought, Rhys felt Jack's hand abandon his wrist.

He fell.

He _screamed. _

Time seemed to slow as Rhys' life flashed through his mind. His heart hammered, and three words rushed through his head like a mantra: _I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die!_

Rhys' arms flailed, grabbing out in vain towards Jack, every second stretching on endlessly in his panic.

Jack had gotten to his feet, that raw, unrestrained laughter barking from his smiling lips, mocking Rhys as he fell. Then, Jack jumped down after Rhys, arms up in the air, falling _slowly _down along with Rhys' writhing form. It took Rhys a moment to realise that his perception of time hadn't slowed…_he _was falling slowly too.

"Low-gravity, Dum-Dum," Jack teased, smirking at Rhys as the panic began to subside. "Welcome to the Vault of the Sentinel, cupcake."

The two landed on the ground — Jack gracefully and upon two feet, and Rhys in a crumple of limbs and twisted joints. He staggered to his feet, lips taut in a scowl as he narrowed his eyes at Jack.

"_Dick_…" Rhys muttered under his breath, ignoring AI Jack's supporting laughter. The hologram floated over the Jack, who regarded his copy with slight distaste.

"Hey, _Father of the Year_, you forgettin' something?" AI Jack sneered, chuckling as Jack grabbed at his throat in a violent and worrying display of raw instinct. His hand phased through the program's cobalt neck. Jack growled, then deliberately turned his back on his digital counterpart to face Rhys instead. The ignored hologram began swiping at Jack's throat from behind him.

"Angel told me to come after you. Said if something happened to _you_, she'd be stuck forever so…kind in my best interest for you not to die in some stupidly hilarious manner between here and finding out how to help my daughter," Jack explained, though Rhys noted the man wasn't looking him in the eye.

Rhys let a smirk tug on his mouth and folded his arms across his chest as he bucked his weight to one leg.

"You were _worried _about me," Rhys said, the smirk practically becoming a smile. At this, Jack's eyes went wide with anger, though Rhys was sure that was the give an excuse for the peppering of red on his cheeks.

"I mean, _yeah_, I was worried you'd die and mess up everything, that's what I just _said_!" Jack snapped, a muscle twitching his jaw. "You're one half of a whole idiot, and I am _not _letting Angel's _entire life _drop into your noodle-arms!"

"Huh," Rhys nodded, then started to walk across the Vault. As he passed Jack, he mused aloud: "I wonder who the _other_ half of that _whole idiot _is then?"

He glanced over his shoulder, and Rhys couldn't help but roll his eyes at the sight of AI Jack and Handsome Jack standing next to each other, each pointing a finger at the other and fixing Rhys with the same, furious expression of utter insult.

Rhys turned his attention back to the task at hand. Luckily, this Vault was _tiny_ and horrifically empty. The Sentinel was long-dead, it seemed, leaving a straight route across the Vault to the smashed door on the other side. He didn't doubt their luck wouldn't extend beyond this Vault though. Maybe the next one would be several days' worth of walking. Rhys's face fell into a premature grimace just thinking about it.

He was so wrapped up in worry about what was coming next that Rhys neglected to realise he was walking alone into this new Vault until AI Jack appeared in front of him. Rhys screeched to a halt, almost snapping at the digital ghost, but the AI cut him off by point back over Rhys' shoulder.

"We got a problem," he announced, though from the look on his face, AI Jack didn't think it was _much _of an issue. That alone sent alarm bells ringing in Rhys' mind, and he whipped around to look back at the Vault he had just left. There, standing on the other side of the Warrior-broken wall, was a deeply disgruntled looking Jack.

"It's done an Angel on me," he complained as Rhys drew closer. Jack put a hand out and pressed his palm flat against an invisible barrier between him and Rhys. Rhys's heart dropped, and for the first time in a while he could see the old burns on Jack's palm from when he had scaled the Warrior. The scars had stitched over in the same, strange blue tissue that the brand on his face had healed into. "Great. Fan-_fricking-_tastic! God, y'know, sometimes it feels like the whole damn _universe _is tryin' to make it way harder than it needs to be to _freaking save it_!"

The man kicked out at the barrier then, earning him nothing but a reminder that he was trapped. Meanwhile, Rhys was doing his best to keep his breathing under control and his brain moving at a semi-normal speed.

"You…you defeated the Sentinel…" Rhys muttered, glancing through to the Vault to see if the Watcher was going to show up.

"Sorta," Jack shrugged. "I hired the goons who put the bullets in it. I was super-busy at the time trying to stop the moon from being destroyed by a psychopath with a dumb name. Had to outsource a little."

"Jack, don't you get it?" Rhys asked, glancing back to him. "Angel is being made to replace the Destroyer because _she _led the Vault Hunters to it. So you…you're gonna replace…"

_Oh god. _

Rhys's knees almost buckled under him as a piece of the puzzle slotted into his mind.

_Fiona. We defeated the Traveler, and I'm here…so what if she's trapped…what if she's…_

"_Hey! _Rhysie! Don't you go spiralling on me now!" Jack snapped, rapping a knuckle against the invisible wall between them. "Listen. You're finding a way to bust Angel out, right? So, you can get me outta here too!"

Rhys could only gawk at him.

"How are you so _calm_ about this?" He asked, incredulous. "Five minutes ago you didn't even trust me to do the first one of those things."

"Because five minutes ago, you didn't have a way outta these Vaults any more than I did," Jack pointed out. He lifted a hand, beckoning Rhys to come back into the Vault of the Sentinel. Confused, the man did as he was told, fixing Jack with a cautionary look as he continued: "Five minutes ago, I didn't have an idea. But now? Now we got _both _of those things, pumpkin."

Jack was smiling, but for some reason, it only made Rhys feel more nervous.

"H-how?" He asked, twitching to look around the Vault.

"'Cause I'm gonna do the last thing _anyone _expected me to do," Jack announced, holding his arms out. "I'm gonna do _exactly _what the Watcher wants."

Rhys cocked his head to the side, fixing Jack with a quizzical look. Then it hit him, and he had to stop himself lunging forward towards Jack in a panic.

"Wait, _no! _You have no idea what that'll do!" Rhys yelped, watching as the crystals around the Vault hummed. The Vault around them began to slowly brighten, energy crackling back to life as the Vault began to reawaken. "Jack, stop! If you agree to replace the Sentinel—"

"—then the Vault comes back online," Jack interrupted him, pointing over to the Vault's door. Rhys turned to look at it, watching as the purple energy of the Vault snaked its way around, darting along the upside-down V-shaped arch. After a few moments, the dead space within the arch sparked to life, shimmering and swimming with violet light. "An active Vault complete with Guardian gets to connect to the outside world, right? So get out already!"

"Jack…" Rhys didn't run for the door. He lingered, casting a look back to Jack. The man did not appreciate it, and his face twisted in insult of Rhys' offered pity.

"The longer you spend in here, the longer you're leaving my little girl stuck in the _Destroyer's Vault_, asshole!" The man growled. Already, Rhys could see Jack changing — his eyes were brighter, skin flaking away to show that cobalt blue tissue beneath. Part of him didn't want to stick around to see what becoming a Vault Guardian really entailed. "And I _really _don't fancy having three faces, so if you could get a move on, buttercup, that'd be just _ace_."

_He's trusting me?_ Rhys thought, starting to back away from Jack to head towards the Vault door. Despite their strange connection, Rhys found he didn't like the idea of leaving the man alone in this Vault. He still had no idea how to get Angel and Jack out — what if it took months? Years? What if he never figured it out and they were trapped here?

"Rhysie, we gotta go," AI Jack flickered in front of Rhys, cutting his view off of Jack. "Watcher'll be rubbing their hands with glee right now, but they're gonna realise in about three seconds flat that this is _Handsome Jack _who is being cooperative and that's a big red flag. Kinda don't wanna be here when they show up and lock the door or something."

"R-right…" Rhys stammered, turning and running to the door. As he reached its arching maw, he skidded to a halt. He offered one last look back to Jack, nodding once and calling over: "I'll get you both out of here. I promise."

Jack only folded his arms in response, a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips.

"If you don't, I'll tell every mouth-breathing Vaultie that lumbers in here that Atlas' CEO is porking their mom," Jack casually threatened with a shrug.

Rhys's face crumpled with distaste, that horrible image and threat both vying for the spotlight in his mind. With that, the man turned and headed out of the Vault, purple light swimming in front of his eyes and momentarily blinding him.

The ground fell out from under his feet, sending Rhys crashing through an awful sensation of free-falling. He tensed his muscles, trying to resist the urge to flail and scream. Then, it was over, and the man was spat out into the outside world.

An outside world with very little gravity _or _oxygen.

Rhys tried to gasp, his breathing raking through his throat noisily, arms scrambling out in desperation. AI Jack floated by, a finger drumming on his bottom lip.

"Aw yeah, Vault of the Sentinel is on the moon. Figures it would spitcha out there," he said, looking far too content to watch Rhys struggle to breathe. "Lucky for you, I got all his memories of this place! Y'need an _Oz kit_. Plenty of dead Vault Hunters around here for ya to loot though. That's convenient."

Rhys paid little attention to the AI's commentary and began scrambling among the corpses littering the way to the Vault's door. He didn't really know what he was looking for, but he didn't have breath enough to ask the AI to elaborate. He sent a wide-eyed, spluttering face his way instead.

AI Jack blinked.

"Oh!" The AI tapped his own shoulder. "The doo-dad on their shoulder. Take it off, pop it on, click the blue button on the right. Man, _breathing_. You literally can't _breathe_ in and out without my help…that's a new low, Rhysie."

Rhys fell into a corpse and began tearing at its shoulder, fumbling to pull the Oz kit off. He clamped it onto his own shoulder with enough force to promise a bruise in the morning and ferreted for the button. A click, a hiss, and a flicker of blueish light later and Rhys was lying flat on his back, gulping down lungfuls of blessed recycled air.

It wasn't long before AI Jack sailed into view again, upside-down and far too close to Rhys' face.

"Don't get comfy, pumpkin," the AI smiled. "Y'got company. Did I ever tell you about the _mini_ guardians who tear Vault Hunters into bloody pieces if they try to get close to a Vault door?"

* * *

There were many times in Rhys' life that he himself would admit he had no business escaping alive from. The mad, Jackhammer-wielding dash from the Vault door through Elpis has certainly been one such time, and it had been made so much more stressful by the accompany background music of AI Jack's laughter. Still, Rhys couldn't stay pissed off at the AI once they had Fast-Traveled their way back to Pandora. After all, the program had the mind of the galaxy's most ruthless CEO.

Rhys did not.

And they needed Atlas to grow. Fast.

"Okay, first things first, we can't set up on Pandora, the place is a tip," the AI said, floating on his front alongside Rhys and gesturing with open palms to the wasteland around them. Rhys arched an eyebrow.

"_Set up_?"

"Yeah," AI Jack said, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. "What, you were just gonna hunker down in a cave and try and figure out this mystery on your own? Nah nah nah, you need _power_ and _brains_, Rhysie, and sadly, to get more brainpower, you gotta hire people to work for ya. Sucks, I know, you end up having to do half the job yourself most times."

"I _have _employees already, Jack," Rhys corrected him, thinking of the five nerds in the small office space he'd hired on Promethea. He wondered if they had kept coming into the office in his absence. "Atlas is…a start-up. Sort of. We're getting there. But we should have enough to start looking into ways to help Angel and Jack."

The AI rolled onto his back, looking over at Rhys.

"Alright, but tell me it's not on Pandora. I am so _sick _of this pulsing haemorrhoid on the ass of the universe," AI Jack lamented, wrinkling his nose as he looked out across the wasteland. "Seriously, why Meat-Me wanted to save it is beyond me."

Rhys huffed a laugh, a small agreement with the AI. Pandora had certainly not been his first, second, or seventeenth choice for setting up his new business. Sure, a company like Hyperion could flourish here — they already _had _resources, so arriving on a planet like Pandora and waving around the big bucks made you king without question. But for the new Atlas? They needed to be a little more reserved.

"You're gonna love Promethea," Rhys said, smiling over to the AI. "All lights, all neon, loads of tech."

AI Jack perked up, a feline grin spreading over his face as his eyes glossed over a little.

"Any robots?"

Rhys' face hardened into a mask of scorn.

"No duplicating yourself across a robot army."

The AI scowled, jutting its bottom lip.

"You're no fun, Rhys, has anyone ever told you that?" Then, he froze. He screwed his eyes shut, giving a grunt of irritation, and shook his head. "Wait-wait-wait! No! No one can replace or replicate _me_! That's the whole damn _point_! _I'm _one of a kind! God, okay, first thing we're gonna do when we get to Promethea is delete these stupid command codes Naka-what's-his-name put into my programming!"

"_Nakayama,_" Rhys corrected him, "and wow, you really wanna do that? Really committing to the whole…_your-own-person_ thing?"

The AI looked away, and for a moment, Rhys thought the hologram looked _wistful_ about it.

"Yeah well…I'm a walking, talking second-chance, right? Figures that I can't just pick up where he left off and do as he did. _Obviously _that ended really freaking _badly _for him. So, I'm gonna do my own thing."

"Well," Rhys hummed, bringing them to a stop outside a Fast-Travel station. He tapped on the machine bringing up the menu for off-world travel. "How about you come work for Atlas? We're going monster-hunting."


	18. Chapter 18

Progress was progress, but slow progress was annoying all the same. Even with AI Jack's bountiful knowledge of running a company, it took several months to get Atlas to the point where its assets and resources were usable for one project, let alone three.

"Track the Warrior, find a way to free Jack and Angel from the Vaults, find out where the hell Fiona went…easy," Rhys muttered to himself for the third time that day. Today was a particularly bad day for no other reason than Rhys had woken up in a particularly rotten mood about it all. Some days, it would hit him harder than others — that waking up marked yet another day that Angel and Jack were stuck in the Vaults, slowly being cemented as the new Vault Guardians. Or, it was another day where Fiona was completely missing, with no one having heard a word from her since she and Rhys had headed into the Vault of the Traveler.

"We were kinda hoping _you _knew," Vaughn had stammered after their tearful reunion months ago, when Rhys and AI Jack had stumbled across Pandora in search of the accountant. "She's err…she's…not come out of there with you?"

Rhys was snapped back to the present by a familiar drawl:

"Yeah well, it would be a lot easier if you weren't being such a miserable REDACTED! about it," AI Jack complained, his voice rising to a booming shout that nearly knocked Rhys out of his seat. The program scowled, bringing one hand up to his throat. "Oh, for the love of crap, Rhys, what did you do _this_ time?"

"Hey, you said I could remove a few words from your vocabulary bank," Rhys hummed, a smug smile tugging on the corner of his lips. "That was one of them."

"Yeah, I agreed to REDACTED! not REDACTED!" The frustrated artificial intelligence growled, though with each "redacted" he uttered, he was forced to yell the word for all to hear. Rhys could feel Vaughn glaring into the back of his head. The two of them had been quite excited to share an office at the newfound Atlas. At least, until Jack had figured out how to worm his way into the projector Vaughn had brought in. Now, he could make his presence known to everyone. "Wow, that's frustrating. I can't even complain about it. I'm…oddly proud of you, you _dick_," AI Jack concluded calmly, tilting his head to the side and fixing Rhys with a quizzical look that still held more than a hint of anger.

"Least it worked this time," Rhys countered, straightening himself in his seat and returning to his work. "Who knew coding '_delete asshole_' could have so many consequences?"

"Literally anyone with a scrap of common sense, piss-for-brains," the digital ghost reprimanded him, the memory of the _first _attempt Rhys had made at altering his vocabulary shivering through his whole form. Jack then leaned over, poking an ethereal finger at Rhys' head that phased through his skull.

In the corner, Vaughn sighed loudly and dropped a handful of papers down on his desk in defeat.

"Just when I thought I couldn't be any more traumatized! You gotta half-share a story where you accidentally _deleted Jack's asshole_. Thanks for that, bro. I really appreciate it," Vaughn piped up, getting out of his seat and shuffling over to Rhys' desk, a digipad cradled in one arm. He gave the floating blue program a wide berth, having made little progress in accepting AI Jack's presence. Rhys couldn't blame him. They had made strides in the AI's attempts to be his own person, altering his code as the AI requested. But apparently, being a bit of a dick was just common ground between him and the man he was coded after. It wasn't unheard of for AI Jack to wind Vaughn up for hours by appearing on his computer screen and kicking files and documents into the recycling bin.

"Happy for you to change the subject," Rhys offered, smiling at Vaughn. "_Please _gimme some good news."

"Well, now you mention it…I might just have that. You know that energy spike we picked up a few weeks ago in Eridium Blight?"

"The one you had me _running _through the ECHO network to go look at?" AI Jack interjected, swinging upside-down between Rhys and Vaughn, making the latter jolt in surprise. "You wanna know what I run for? Nothing. But I hoofed it over there just for you, sport. You're welcome, by the way."

"Y-yeah, err…a-a-and you said there was nothing when you got there?" Vaughn stepped back a few paces from Jack.

"Honestly, the worst part. Out of breath _and_ nothing to look 'cept a few Maliwan outrunners and tyre tracks in the dust."

"Do you even breathe?" Rhys asked, arching an eyebrow at AI Jack.

"Only if it adds to a sob story," Jack replied, flipping down to his feet and wiping an imaginary tear away from the corner of his suddenly-doe-like eyes.

"Okay, w-well…it's been a few weeks and I've picked up a few weak pulses of that same energy reading a coupla times. And now, Maliwan's coming out with some crazy new elemental weaponry," Vaughn turned the digipad screen towards Rhys and AI Jack, letting them see the latest advertisement from the company. "Like, _way _crazier than before."

"And _sllll-ooo-ooo-ooow_ as all hell, look at those specs!" AI Jack laughed, making to swipe the digipad from Vaughn's hand and failing. "Oh yeah…but yeah nah, that's just…that's _sad_. All that fire and lightning crap and you gotta wait _even longer _for it to show up after you pull the trigger? Dumb bastards."

"Yeah, _look _at those specs…" Rhys muttered, taking the screen from Vaughn. "It's slow, but even a pistol could take down a Rakk Hive if those numbers are right…what the hell have they come up with?"

"My guess?" Vaughn fidgeted with his glasses, turning terrified eyes to Rhys. "That first spike? I…I think your Warrior finally smashed out into the world. And I reckon Maliwan were there to capture it before we could."

* * *

With an employee count of seven, a lot of Atlas tasks fell on the desk of the CEO himself. Infiltrating Maliwan for a spot of corporate espionage was one such task, much to Rhys' disdain.

As he crept towards the gaudy, orange-and-cyan branded building, Rhys flinched as Jack's voice launched over his shoulder:

"Testing, one two, one two, can you hear me?!"

"_I can hear you, dammit!_" Rhys hissed, turning to look over his shoulder at the smirking AI.

"I was asking the security guards, pumpkin, y'know, just checkin'."

"_Of course they can't hear you, you're in my head!_"

"Man, if they heard you right now, they probably wouldn't even arrest you, you skinny little psycho."

"_Look just…scout out for me or something. I need a way in,_" Rhys whispered, ducking for cover around one of the building's walls and scanning the area with his ECHO eye, the lens glimmering to life in a bright blink of gold. "God, how did Maliwan even _know _the Warrior would show up outside a Vault? The world hates me..."

AI Jack's lips pursed, and for a moment, it looked like he might do the impossible and do as he was told. Maybe he had developed his own personality after all. Maybe he felt sorry for Rhys, Rhys dared to dream.

Then, the AI jerked a thumb at the front door.

"Maliwan, dude. _Famously _bad security. Walk right up to the front door. Trust me, Jack's gotcha covered."

With a smirk and a set of finger guns, the AI disappeared, leaving a frustrated Rhys with no other choice than to inhale and straighten up.

"The front door. Just walk…right on up there. Got it."

Rhys' skin drew cold as the guards at the front gates stirred, firearms clicking in their hands though they didn't raise them.

AI Jack's voice rumbled through his head:

"Walk like you're a Maliwan employee, give it a little twitchy swagger, like your Dad didn't hug you enough and you have eleven siblings to outshine," AI Jack said. "Famously bad security. Seriously. Offline and online — most of Maliwan's guards are on other company's payrolls. They won't care so long as you look the part."

True to his word, the guards barely looked up as Rhys climbed the front steps to the doors. There wasn't even a human on the reception desk, just an eye scanner and a vacuum-sealed door.

"Great. Now what?" Rhys hissed, a hand coming up to his ear.

"Putcha hand down, dum-dum, you're not wearing an earpiece! God, way to make yourself look ten times more suspicious," AI Jack snapped, flickering in front of Rhys. "I've played around with your ECHO eye. Now, you're Gordon Cwesrole from Finances. Honestly, their online security—"

The program stopped. His head twitched, perking up as though he had heard something in the distance. He looked away from Rhys, eyes focussing on something Rhys couldn't find when he followed the AI's line of sight. For a moment, AI Jack's smug smile wavered.

"You...you ok?" Rhys prompted.

The program looked at Rhys then, eyes clearer than Rhys had ever recalled. It took a moment to realise the cause — _sincerity_. He hadn't ever seen it in the AI's expression before.

"You're...we're busting this thing outta here to find out how it breaks outta Vaults, right? To save Angel?" The AI asked suddenly, moving forward as urgency tightened his tone and hunched his body. Rhys couldn't help but stagger back at the rawness of his display, thrown off by Jack's almost pleading voice.

"Yeah, of course. Jack, what's happening? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," the other snapped, floating away from Rhys and folding his arms. "Just, y'know, feels like me doing all the work here. Making sure it's worth it. For me."

"A-alright, ahhh, yeah. Wrangle the Warrior, figure out its powers, bust Angel and Jack outta the Vaults."

"Hurry up and get scanning then, REDACTED!" AI Jack yelled, disappearing once more. Frowning and wondering what the hell he'd done to upset the AI, Rhys leaned in to the eye scan, heart hammering in his chest as he trusted the AI on nothing but his word.

"**WELCOME BACK MR CWESROLE**," the door trilled, hissing as it unlocked and let him in. Rhys slipped into the building, trying his best to blend in with the crowds of corporate-beaten employees and appear as though he knew the place well. The former came naturally to him.

"_Jaaack_, little help?" Rhys muttered from the side of his mouth. "No map, no direction here?"

For a while, Rhys was met with silence. He couldn't believe AI Jack had picked _now_ to have a sudden sulk. But then, the program's voice crackled through his head. Something sounded off, as though AI Jack were speaking to him through an old ECHO device rather than within his brain augmentation.

"_Err, y-yeah keep—left at the HR cupboard and—one elevator with access to the CEO floor. You're gonna need me to get it open so hur—_"

"Jack?" Rhys whispered, head turning down to try and shield his mouth from watchful passer-bys. "Jack, are you okay? Breaking up on me."

"_I'm fine, it's just—like, BAD security not NO security—get in the elevator to the CEO floor—_"

He didn't know why, but Rhys found himself picking up the pace more than he should for keeping a low profile. Something in the AI's voice didn't sit right with him. Worse, it didn't sit right with AI Jack.

He sounded scared.

Rhys had only heard that once before, the memory snaking in front of his mind's eye as he rushed blindly through Maliwan's winding corridors: his showdown with the corrupt program, bloody and violent, tearing out his ECHO eye, ready to crush it and Jack out of the universe for good, seeing true fear flutter over AI Jack's face...

_Please, don't send me back there! It's not like they say, there's nothing...absolutely nothing._

A blur of a door plate told Rhys he was on the right track, and he bolted left past the HR cupboard and towards grand cylinder of orange and cyan, two opaque glass doors at the front.

"Jack, I'm here, I'm at the elevator. Now what?" Rhys asked, falling into the closed door and starting to jab at the buttons at the side of it in vain. The screen above the number panel flashed red and the doors remained resolutely shut.

"Now...I bust 'em open-open-open now I bust them open for y-you-_ou-ou..._"

Rhys started, whirling around to try and locate where Jack's fractured voice was coming from. Then, fading into view, the dim blue figure of AI Jack emerged from thin air. The man was hunched over, and Rhys' heart sank to his gut as he saw fragments of the AI breaking away like dust in the wind even as he watched.

The AI looked up at him, a tired smile twisting one corner of his mouth.

"I...I guess they f-f-finally up-upgr_rrr-rrrzzzz-graaa_aded," the AI glitched and choked, the image violently distorting.

"Jack!" Rhys yelped, clamping a hand over his own mouth, remembering where he was. Lowering his voice, he hissed: "Get out of there! C-come back, I'll hack it—"

"N-nnn-no! Th-this f-firewall is something else, pumpkin. If it g-gets in your systems, y-you'll go haywire a-a-a-and then we'll miss our shot t-t-to_ooooo_ finally get this lava-ba-ba-bastard and s-s_ssszzzzzzz_-aaaave Angel," the AI protested.

He began to move over to the lift control panel, reaching out and phasing his hand through the buttons. The AI bared his teeth and hissed as though it scorched him.

"Jack, but...but you—"

"I'll h-hack this open and it'll s-s-send you send you send you straight to the CEO floor. I can bring down the-the whole bring down the whole security system once I'm in. Got a-a-about three minutes before th-the firewalls gets me. Wherever the Warrior's being held, however they-they-they located it, that's where-where-where where you'll find out," AI Jack pressed on, refusing to meet Rhys' eye.

"No, c'mon, just...hurry and hack it then jump back into my head, it's easy, right?" Rhys pleaded, almost laughing, sure that the AI was just being dramatic.

The smallest, saddest of smiles danced on AI Jack's face for a heartbeat, then it was gone.

"It sp-spotted me at the fr-front door when I raided their files for that eye s-sc-scan data, cupcake. A-a-lready had me ma-ma-marked as a virus then and there."

"W-well, let me help you!"

"Oh, look at Rhysie...a re_eeaa_al hero, ready t-t-t-to give Handsome Jack a s-s-second ch-cha-chance," the AI mocked, hand still stuck in the control panel. The screen was flickering green and red so rapidly it made Rhys' eyes sting.

"I thought you were working on that yourself," Rhys pointed out, words tumbling from his mouth so quickly he almost tripped on them. "That was the point, right? You're not Handsome Jack, you're your own Jack! We were gonna work on that, get you a fresh start! We already messed around with your code and you've even started being nice to Vaughn! Kinda!"

"Rhys...I'm—I'm I'm a _program_," AI Jack replies, bitterness forming around him. "I'm stuck however I'm coded, whether th-that's you or Nakay-y-yama. I'm not _finding myself_...I'm not _choosing_ to be better...I'm just re-coding my behaviour processes..."

"But you _chose_ to ask me to help recode you! Because you _wanted_ to be better! That counts!" Rhys interjected. "Just...g-get out of there, I'll hack it myself. I'll be fine!"

"No! Don't you g-g-get it, moron?" The AI turned on him then, caught between anger and frustration. One half of him was glitching, fading and jarring blue then purple, pink then green, pixels blurring and stealing the finer details of his face. "I was coded to be a replicant of Handsome Jack at-at-at Handsome Jack at his worst. Selfish, narcissistic, megalomanic. And whatever I change my-my code to, I'm not working at being a better person, I'm just following my-my-m_yyyy_ coding. But the real me? The living guy? He's human. Humans get to change and, and humans get to change and, humans get to change and I've seen Jack slowly changing 'cause of you, pumpkin. Man, even Handsome freakin' Jack is making an effort for you. I can't change, not really, not...not like _that_. It doesn't take effort to ch-change my co-_oooo_de so it doesn't mean jack-shit. I...can't ever be my own person. Not really."

Something crackled around AI Jack's wrist, dragging a startled gasp from him. Rhys jumped forwards, hands gliding through the ghostly form of the program.

"That's not true!" Rhys whimpered, wrestling his rising panic with his need to keep his voice down. "You've changed! And not just because of your coding, I mean, look at you! Look what you're _doing_! You're helping someone other than yourself!"

AI Jack scoffed.

"Yeah? I-I-I guess. I...I hope...I never find out if you're right about that or not, Rhysie. C-cause if I did, I'd stop doing this—doing this—doing this right now. I'd stop being a hero-hero-hee_ee-rrrr-ooo_o right now. Rather...stick around with you than delete myself saving this stupid world."

"Then come back! I'll hack it and whatever it does to my cybernetics, we'll figure it out. I've worked with bigger headaches, trust me. Jack...Jack, please. Please don't..."

The screen above the button panel landed on solid green, the light steady and bold.

Rhys' heart stopped.

AI Jack looked at him, and Rhys could now see that half of his face had been erroded away already by the vicious security system.

"Go be a hero, pumpkin," AI Jack smiled as his whole form crackled and splintered like glass. Before Rhys could cry out, reach out, do anything at all, the program crumbled into countless shards of light, breaking up and flittering away into nothingness.


End file.
